Misplaced Need
by restlessxpen
Summary: All Jacob thought he'd ever want was Bella. However, after Edward left, and he got exactly what he wanted, Jacob wasn't sure if he could handle being second best. And maybe he's missed his only chance to ever be something else.
1. Scarred

He scrutinized her in the dark, only a shaft of moonlight washing, cold, over her pale body. It dipped in through the curtains, curving across the mattress and sheets. It was a winter moon, despite the fact that it rose in the middle of summer. The room was almost too warm with minimal effort exerted on behalf of the air conditioning. The window unit buzzed grumpily in the living room, and the sound carried. It sifted through the house like a stale breeze.

The sheet wrapped around his leg was damp from the lingering sweat of sex. It pressed against his skin like a clammy hand. Jacob tried to maneuver his leg free without jostling the bed, but the smallest movement made Bella pout in her sleep, so he conceded himself to the bind, and he watched her sleep.

Because he couldn't.

Maybe, once upon a time, he would have believed that it was all he needed, but he couldn't continue to convince himself. In the dead of night, he was the one lying awake, staring at the arm that somehow never remained tucked underneath the covers. It rested upright, and he could see the crescent moon scar of raised skin. He didn't know who had marked her, but it didn't matter. The scar always brought his thoughts to one person, and the horrible idea that, if Edward had come back, Bella would not be sharing his bed.

Jacob was just the filler, crudely occupying the cracks, trying—and failing—to be enough. He couldn't stretch himself far enough to be convincing, even if he rarely saw the vampire in Bella's eyes anymore, in the way that she would sometimes take a step away. She'd stopped looking over her shoulder, second-guessing herself.

And he had picked up all of her nervous habits as his own.

It was a miserable way to live, barely surviving, but he'd turned himself into a crutch, and he was so heavily leaning on the identity that he didn't know how to begin to break free. If he pulled away from Bella, it would break her. He couldn't break her like Edward had, because he loved her, and nothing could ever free him from that.

He would remain here, forever, to accept and return whatever love she had left to give, even if it was barely lukewarm affection. He would be her second place trophy, the guy that helped her survive when the other had left her for dead.

And he would lead a second, secret life in order to keep existing—to ingest the fuel that it would take to keep being there for Bella Swan. A little taste of freedom to smooth over the lifelong servitude he'd pledged himself too.

Because all Bella had to do was tell him that she loved him, and he would bow to that single emotion that he had always needed from her.

Bella breathed lightly in her sleep. He could barely make out the rise and fall of her chest. In moments of weakness, he would place his head there, above her heart, and he'd listen to it beating, and he'd remind himself why he was doing this: pretending that they could have been meant to be together. He was keeping her alive, and that was all that mattered.

She inhaled, sighing, and rolled away from him, onto her side—pulling the covers as she went, looping them around her naked waist. The movement unraveled the binding around his leg, and Jacob felt a scarce moment of freedom, which he seized by sliding off the bed, landing lightly on his feet.

He'd learned how to move quietly through his house. The floors weren't aged enough to creak and groan with his weight, but he kept to the same tracks, each night trailing through the house like a ghost across the navy carpet of his bedroom and onto the white carpet that led down the hall to the living room. Jacob knew where the coffee table was in the dark, where the lamp stood next to the bookshelf, and how many steps it took to get safely around the couch without any stubbed toes.

But he didn't have to do any of it blind, because the kitchen light had been left on. It drew him to the linoleum floors—cold against the pads of his feet—where he switched off the light, dragging a blanket around his waist that he had grabbed off the back of the couch.

He tucked the corner under the length around his waist, so that it would hold itself in place while he rummaged through the fridge for a snack that he didn't really want, needing something to fill his anxious hands. Bella was still on them.

"Fuck." He wiped them on his chest, though Bella was there too.

She was everywhere in his house, on his hands, in his head.

Jacob froze as he reached for the door to the refrigerator, his eyes drawn to a dot of light left in the darkness—a glowing ember on the other side of the glass sliding door that led from the kitchen onto a back porch. His thoughts scattered as he stared at the light, half a notion that Edward Cullen was on his porch.

Not quite.

He listened to the house before he made any move toward the door, worried that Bella had woken, though he hadn't made a sound. The only noise came from the air conditioner, and it followed him out onto the porch until he slid the door shut behind him.

It was just crickets after that, just the sound of lips closing and parting over a cigarette—breathing in and exhaling smoke. The clouds of smoke wafted away as he fanned them with his hand.

"Why do you do that?"

Leah Clearwater smiled. "Because I'm miserable."

The moonlight reflected differently against her. It cast shadows that blended seamlessly with her black hair—shadows that crawled toward her eyes. The irises gleamed only when she turned her head to blow smoke into the yard, turning black again when she faced him. Her shirt consisted of straps that tapered down from her shoulders and formed a cylinder of loose cloth around her breasts and stomach. He thought it might have been pale yellow, but the color was lost in the dark.

She tapped the ash, letting it fall freely.

"I'm surprised _you_ don't smoke," she said.

He felt the weight of the house against him, as if the walls were leaning on his back. The burden of the girl sleeping inside was almost unbearable. He stared at Leah, seeing glimpses of freedom when she turned to blow smoke. The material of her shirt twisted with her, and he saw the smooth shapes of her body, feeling something he hadn't felt when he'd been entwined with Bella.

He decided to change the subject. "What are you doing here?"

Their meetings were usually scheduled, more secluded. His house was sitting on a far point of the La Push reservation, deep enough to be densely surrounded by tall, soldier-like trees. He seldom heard the sound of cars or life outside of the forest, but it wasn't the place to meet Leah still, because Bella was inside.

Leah was staring at the blanket wrapped around his waist, her cigarette suspended between two fingers, momentarily forgotten. Her face was in the shadows again, so he couldn't read it, but it seemed like it took a long time for her gaze to lift back to his. He felt naked but wasn't bothered by the sensation that Leah was imagining him so.

"I came to tell you that I'm leaving."

Maybe he had been expecting this to happen for awhile—for Leah to detach herself from their no-strings commitment. She had said that she needed the escape too, but it wasn't an escape. The chain that connected him to Bella had quickly snapped around her ankle too. Leah felt as trapped as he did, and, unlike him, she didn't have motivation to stick around. She couldn't understand what he would sacrifice to keep Bella safe and happy.

But he felt the pain of her rejection tearing deep—invisible to the naked eye as it worked its internal damage, and he refused to show it. If Leah wanted freedom, who was he to stop her? But he wanted to. The feel of her skin was as real to him as Bella's, as present on his hands as anything else. It was the taste of her lips that he remembered most.

Chocolate cake had been on her tongue the last time they'd met, sweet with icing from the flower she'd scooped off the top. Sue's birthday party had been an excuse to see her. Sue's bathroom had been a risky place to meet for a fleeting kiss.

He couldn't pinpoint exactly when it had started with Leah. Maybe a year after Edward left. Maybe a year and a half—after Sam and Emily's wedding, a moment when she had seemed so vulnerable and exposed that he'd been drawn to her, feeling as if he knew what she must be going through as real as if Edward and Bella had been getting married.

She'd asked him about Bella, and he'd kissed her behind the shrubs at the church. It was the craziest thing he'd ever done—kissing Leah. She'd never even hinted at the idea that she might have wanted him to. If anything, it had always been an effort to even be polite with Leah.

But when he'd kissed her, she'd kissed him back, and it hadn't been a peck.

It'd escalated from there into secret meetings. She'd known about his relationship with Bella, said she understood. It didn't seem to be the case anymore.

"Where are you going?"

She lifted a shoulder, and the strap of her shirt slid down. He leaned forward, pushing the strap gently back into place, touching her skin.

"I don't know. Farther than Seattle. Somewhere you can't just drive to without packing some clothes."

Jacob wanted to ask her if she was leaving to get away from him. Why else could she need to leave? He liked to think that it didn't have to do with Sam. As strange as it was, it would have made him feel worse. If she left because of him, she had feelings for him.

He ran a hand through his hair. "Why?"

Leah snorted, cocking a brow. "Don't you know? Tell me you don't want to do the same."

Inside the house, Bella was sleeping—possibly dreaming about Edward, not him. He would always live with the apprehension. He'd seen the way that his absence had destroyed her. It'd been incredibly difficult to build her back up again, but it was likely that she was still on a shaky foundation. One wrong move, and he could send her crumbling. Whatever he felt for Leah, he knew that he loved Bella. He always had, hadn't he? It wasn't as easy for him to leave. He couldn't just cut and go.

"It's not that easy."

Leah took a drag from her cigarette.

"It is, actually," she said, "and, once I go, I'm going to kick this habit you so disapprove of. Everything will be better outside of La Push."

She gestured to her cigarette, flicking away what was left. Jacob watched it flip through the air, landing a few feet away in the grass. He wanted to tell her not to go—or to take him with her. But he couldn't risk everything for something that wasn't a sure thing. He didn't know what was between them.

But he wanted to fucking touch her more than he could explain. One kiss behind the church, and he was toast. It shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have risked his sanity further. He was barely functioning as it was. He was a shitty excuse for an alpha, hardly capable of being human.

"Good luck then, I guess."

Leah pursed her lips. "That's it?"

"What else is there?"

"You know…stuff. A going away present."

Her hand was between him and the blanket. He felt her fingers curl beneath his belly button. She tugged, and the blanket slid away, leaving him bare ass naked on his back porch.

"Damn it," he said.

The air outside was warm, but her hand felt unnaturally cool as it closed around him, pulling him hard without much effort. His attraction to her was ridiculous. If she hadn't touched him, it wouldn't have mattered. He slid his hands underneath her shirt, cupping her bare breasts. When she moaned, he thought of Bella inside.

They were standing directly in front of the door. His hands slid away.

"Leah…"

"Yeah I know." She dropped her hand. "Bella's."

He wanted to lean into her. He closed his eyes, waiting for the need to subside. They had kissed, touched, but never sex. He couldn't commit like that. What he and Bella had was classified as a relationship. They were together. He didn't know what that made things between him and Leah, except probably wrong.

He felt her mouth press against his, and he didn't open his eyes as her tongue parted his lips.

One more kiss, and then it was over.

"See ya, Jake."

()()()()()

The sheets were still warm. He'd spent less than ten minutes telling Leah goodbye, and now she was in her car, driving to who knew where, escaping. And he was stuck in La Push, bound to the ghosts of his past.

He didn't realize how much he'd miss her until he'd gone back to bed, spread himself out next to Bella. She'd turned into him, her head falling into the crook of his arm. She'd sighed in her sleep, looking extremely contented while he felt his heart leaving in a car on a darkened road.

Was it his heart or his dick?

No denying he wanted Leah physically, but Bella was…

"Jake?"

He remained still as Bella lifted her head, peering down at him sleepily. Her brown hair fell into her face in tangled locks. She was beautiful. He lifted his hand, pressing her hair back. His thumb grazed her cheek.

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

He felt it carving into him, another scar.

"I love you too, Bells."

And he was bound again.

He shouldn't even be considering going after Leah. Not in a million years.


	2. The Lonely Rules

**Author Notes: **Thanks so much for the positive feedback on the first chapter of Misplaced Need. It really, really put a smile on my face. I was worried about attempting an edgier, darker Blackwater fic, but I'm glad that it worked out. On a side note, a fic I wrote as a collab with the author, BellaFlan, was nominated in the best One Night Stand category for a certain contest that you can find here: twinklingswfa (dot) blogspot (dot) com/ . Our Fic was called A Wolf in Cop's Clothing, which you can find linked on my profile. It's-ah-an interesting Leah/Charlie combo, so beware if you want to read. Anyway, thanks again for all your support!

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**Leah POV**

It should have been easy to leave Jake behind, as easy as it had been for him to let her go. Part of her had sort of hoped he'd phase and alpha-command her not to leave, but he didn't.

She left angry, knowing that she shouldn't have expected anything else. She should never have let him kiss her in the first place, behind the church, in a moment of weakness.

What could she have done to prevent it? Seeing Emily in that wedding dress—Sam standing beside her, looking absolutely moronic with that grin on his face. It had torn her straight in half. A few years to heal hadn't been enough to erase the damage. Sam had been her first love, and she'd promised to never fall in love again.

What she felt for Jacob was hardly love, but it had come with a glimpse of a future she was hungry for: one with a man of her own, a blissful lack of awareness of the existence of Sam Uley. She obviously wasn't going to find that in La Push. She hadn't stood a chance against Emily when Sam had imprinted, and whatever it was that Jacob felt for Bella Swan was just as bad.

He'd told her his secret: how he felt trapped, but that didn't change the fact that he never intended to free himself. Kissing and groping were fine, but she wanted what Bella had—which was all of Jacob without restrictions.

What right did Bella have to him? If Edward hadn't have disappeared, she would have left Jake high and dry. She'd never understand him when all she was doing was using him as a crutch. Leah, on the other hand, wanted him for another reason entirely.

She wanted him, because she knew what he was, how he thought. When they were wolves, she was almost the same person as he was, as present in his mind as Jake was himself. She knew all of his secrets, and they shared a common theme with her own.

That was why it was better to get out now—before she became more involved. She didn't want another Sam relapse.

_Sam_.

Leah hissed a breath out between her teeth, tightening one hand on the steering wheel as she used the other to roll down her window. She tossed her last pack of cigarettes out, letting the night breeze carry them somewhere far away from her. She was going to start clean now—before she'd even reached where she was going. That way, when she got there, she'd be someone else already.

"See you, Jake."

La Push had long disappeared from her rearview mirror.

And already she wanted to go back.

Back to a person, not the place. The place could go up in flames, for all she cared. She was so tired of being tied to the pack, the legends, the ancestry. They were all ropes tightening around her, expecting something that she couldn't give. She'd stepped off the straight and narrow path a long time ago, looking out for just herself. She wanted to get somewhere where her secrets could stay secret.

No more phasing. No more wolf. No more vampires.

It was wrong to drop it all like that, she knew, but her mom had Charlie now and Seth still. She could get along without her and hopefully not hold too big of a grudge over the fact that she'd left a goodbye note and that was it. She'd hardly explained anything in it, except that she needed some space, a change of scenery.

That was a good enough excuse, in her opinion, and it was better than just flat out disappearing without a trace.

It wasn't as if she'd kept a lot from her mom, anyway. She didn't know where she was going, so there wasn't anything to tell on that end of the story. She only knew why she was going away, and Leah wasn't about to share that shit with anyone.

Only Jake knew, and he sure as hell wasn't going to tell anyone without outing himself. Jacob wouldn't do that either, because then fragile little Bella might shatter and blow away. He was so terrified of hurting her that he'd forgotten his own pain.

Leah knew from experience that being loved wasn't enough when someone else was loved more. Even though Sam—

_Jesus, what an asshole._

-had told her that he loved her still, it hadn't mattered, because he loved Emily most. Claiming that he'd still loved her had just been a slap to the face.

Leah leaned over, catching the volume knob of the radio and spinning it higher. The song playing had a nice drum beat, so she let it roll over her, keeping her window half-down. She was eating up a lot of highway already—at least an hour away from La Push.

She relieved some pressure off of the gas pedal, wondering, as she did, why she was slowing down, because an hour wasn't far enough away from the people behind her.

When she'd packed her things, she'd told herself that she was getting as far away as possible. All she had to do was think about the day of Sam and Emily's wedding. Before Jake had caught her sniffling pitifully behind the church. Sam had pulled her aside before the ceremony.

She couldn't explain why the fuck he'd found it necessary to tell her, once again—_to reassure her_, he'd said—that he would always love her, no matter what, that she should remember that.

_If she ever needed a friend, a shoulder_, he'd said, _he was the one for her to look up_.

Yeah, right. As if it was some sort of consolation prize that she could still be friends with him. She hated even looking at his face—recognizing the structure of his cheek bones and the curve of his lips—let alone being in the same room as him.

She didn't need a _friend_. She just needed someone to fuck her and be thinking only of her. Leah wasn't unrealistic enough to want something as drastic as love. That was asking too much for someone with baggage.

She had one suitcase with her, but the metaphorical baggage was piled so deep that it was sometimes hard to breathe.

She ran her hands around the steering wheel restlessly, already wishing that she hadn't tossed the cigarettes and lobbed off that security net so quickly. There was a sense of loneliness in the car that made her wish for just one more drag of nicotine. She could feel the empty backseat behind her, as if her passengers had tucked and rolled out the door.

Or maybe it was just the feeling of leaving something behind, knowing she'd forgotten something but unable to figure out what.

Funny, considering that she knew what it was.

It was Jacob.

()()()()()

**Bella POV**

She had been dreaming, woken up as Jacob slid into bed—a moment of security, grasped blindly in the moment of uncertainty and darkness—only to fall back into the same dream, as if her moment of consciousness had not existed at all. The blackness enveloped her, washing to light and color with the image of Edward's face. What she felt wasn't the same as what she'd felt as she recognized Jake's presence sliding into bed with her—it wasn't as secure or certain. It was a moment of freefall where her heart leaped to her throat.

_Edward._

Saying his name was like breathing. It was always on the tip of her tongue, buried underneath the layers of bandage Jacob had wrapped around her broken heart. She knew as she saw him—the phantom image of him—standing before her, cold hands lifted to her face, that she was betraying Jacob. Everything he'd done to help her, and she was so ready to sink into the dream, pretending that the feel of his hands were as real as Jacob's.

She loved Jacob. She hadn't lied about that.

But there would always be something about Edward that she couldn't escape, something that curved into her as sharp and hard as a hook. Bella could feel him pulling at her from every direction, begging her to find him.

_Jesus, just kiss me. For once, just kiss me_.

No restrictions, no holding back, no worrying about her mortality. He tried to play the martyr, but he was so selfish taking himself away from her—so arrogantly self-righteous. She wanted to curse at him, but her lips only parted to accept his.

There was something about kissing ice that sent a shiver straight down her spine, inflaming raw heat in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it was the mystery and allure of death—the threat of the violence that he was capable of.

If he wanted to, he could do _anything_ to her.

And all she wanted him to do was touch her, skimming his hands over the places where Jacob touched. She imagined Edward too, when she was having sex with Jacob. Fire and ice touched her, and she craved for something that she couldn't reach. All of them together—hands touching her, holding her like she would float away if they didn't hold her down.

It was selfish and stupid—reckless and hurtful.

She could feel Edward's mouth on hers, the way that his tongue would carefully explore past her lips, coaxing something out of her that was as animal as Jake's wolf side. She was heat, like Jacob, always needing.

They were both grasping at straws and false hope.

"Bella?"

She opened her eyes and almost said the wrong name as Edward surged up from her dreams with her, only disappearing as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the moon spilling in through the window. She didn't know why her hand automatically went to her chest, reassuring herself that the sheets were still wrapped around her.

Jacob had seen her naked on more than one occasion. He was likely as familiar with her body as she was.

_And vice versa_, she thought, seeing the shape of Jacob in the darkness. She caught glimpses of his eyes as he edged closer to her on the bed, lighting when the moon caught them just right. She could see the concern that she was so used to, and she felt guilty.

And a sliver of desire as his naked body pressed against hers—warm as a fireplace.

"What is it?"

"You were making noises in your sleep. I thought you might have been having a nightmare."

It almost felt like it. As delicious as the memory of Edward was, it was just as much of a burden—a dark shadow that yawned over her life and subconscious. She was afraid to ever need him like that again. It had hardly faded as it was.

Bella reached out, placing a hand flat against Jacob's chest. She could feel his heart beating against her palm, and it made her ache. She wondered if he could feel how clammy her hand was, still moist from the anxiety of her dream.

"I'm all right now," she said. "I'm sorry that I woke you."

Jacob was silent for a moment, and Bella wondered if she hadn't been dreaming, and if Jacob really had been out of bed for at least a little bit of time. She imagined him wandering around the lonely house, wondering what it was that he got up and paced for. Not that he couldn't have just been getting a drink or something. It was just that—

She could feel something about herself mirrored inside Jacob, and she didn't want to see what it was.

"Jake?"

"Yeah?"

"How come you were awake?"

There was a pause again, and then she felt Jacob's lips brush her forehead.

"Leah called."

"This late?"

"Yeah. She decided to move in the middle of the night. Thought she needed to tell the alpha that she was leaving La Push in the dust."

A line creased between Bella's brows.

"Why?"

She saw the outline of Jacob's shoulder rise and fall.

"Who knows. It's _Leah_."

There was a catch in Jacob's voice that caught her attention. She shifted slightly closer to him, wondering what it was that she was missing—or if Jacob was just generally annoyed that a member of his pack had deserted him. Bella had always thought that the wolf bonds must have been close—like family.

"I'm sorry."

Jacob made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

"It's her life. I'm sure she'll be back when she's ready."

He was bitter. Bella tilted her head, trying to read his face in the shadows, but it was impossible. She gave up and let her head rest again on her pillow, fitting snugly against Jacob's side.

"You should have just alpha commanded her to stay."

Jacob snorted, jarring her head.

"Goodnight, Bells."

"Night, Jake."


	3. Miles to Go Before You Sleep

**Author Notes: **So let me apologize right up front for what's bound to be a sporadic, annoying updating schedule. This semester is way crazier than I even anticipated. I barely have time to do much more than eat, sleep, and go to school. However, if you like the fic, I'm asking you to bare with me and pleading for patience that I myself do not have. ;) Hopefully I can make it worth the wait for you guys. Thanks for the support so far, and don't forget to leave your thoughts in the reviews!

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**Jacob POV**

He still couldn't quite figure out why he had been honest with Bella the night before. Had she known that her question had been posed at three o'clock in the morning, she might have been a little more unsettled about the fact that he had spoken to Leah so late. There was a way of rationalizing it: he was alpha of their pack, the first person that needed to know that she was running for it.

But all the rationalization in the world didn't change the fact that hardly anything harmless ever went on in the early hours of the morning.

Plus, he had lied to Bella. Leah hadn't spoken to him over the phone—she'd shown up at his house. If she'd known that, maybe she wouldn't have slept so soundly.

Or maybe she _would_ have. Maybe everything Bella felt for him was out of necessity, and his betrayal of her confidence would at last set her free from the guilt she felt that made her lie in his bed, pretending to love him like she loved Edward.

"Shit." His voice was gruff, thick with the morning.

"What?"

He could picture her sitting there behind him, tucked into her seat at the kitchen table. The shirt she wore was his, and there was a hole starting to wear into the front of it, somewhere over her stomach. He liked that he could see that little fragment of her skin. He liked that she often chose not to wear any pants underneath it, and he liked that the hem of the shirt brushed her bare legs, almost to her knees.

And he hated the fact that this part of him loved Bella, and it would not allow him to be set free. There was still a part of him that functioned just for her, moving when she moved, shielding her when she needed shielded. He was her personal bubble of protection. He breathed only because she breathed.

Jacob's hand tightened around the spatula, and the plastic handle cracked a little, forming a line down its side. He didn't turn to Bella, but he could imagine how the morning sunlight sifted through the curtains, how it'd feel warm on her, heating her after the coldness of last night's moon. And she was Bella again, warm and real with a heartbeat. She was the Bella that he had loved for a long time.

"I burnt the bacon," he said. "Sorry, Bells."

He switched off the burner, looking down at his shriveled, overly-crisp bacon. He had never been a good cook, but Bella had claimed that she liked it when he cooked for her. It'd been a tradition ever since he'd moved out of Billy's.

They hadn't been a couple then. Bella had stayed just a little too far removed for that first year after Edward left, only tentatively warming up to him over the next. After the third year, she'd let him hold her hand without flinching. The kisses he stole were also gradually returned, and Bella blossomed back to life under his attentive care.

He'd bought his house with his dad's help—his dad who wasn't shy about his delight over his son being with the daughter of his best friend—who later told him that it was all that he wanted for him: an independent life where he could finally concentrate on himself without worry of someone depending too deeply on him.

But his dad hadn't known how complicated the ties between him and Bella were, or how intricately they'd tangled. She depended on him more than his dad ever had.

He loved Bella—would do anything for her—but had become her prisoner somewhere along the way, and the only person that had the key to his shackles had left La Push.

_Don't be stupid. Whatever that was with Leah, it will never compare to this._

"It's all right, Jake. I forgive you," Bella said, and it unnerved him how much it sounded like a reply to his own thoughts. "Bring it over. We'll see what we can do with it."

He turned to get some plates and found that Bella wasn't sitting where he'd imagined her. She had been standing so close behind him that he turned into her, their bodies brushing together—hers somehow fitting against his.

He felt her hands on his sides, slowly circling around him as she stepped into him, resting her head against his chest. The silk of her hair was soft and feathery.

"You've been distant lately."

_You know what it feels like then._ There was a part of him that was bitter—that wanted to say something as cruel as what he was thinking. When had she not held some sort of distance between them?

"I have?"

She nodded against his chest.

"Especially today. What's wrong?"

He shrugged, even though he had a mountain of problems he could have listed. But he couldn't exactly tell her that all of his problems had grown from her. Once, he'd thought that she was the answer.

Once, he'd thought about murdering Edward, so that _he_ was the only answer for _her_.

The longer they'd gone on, the more he'd realized that it wouldn't have mattered. He'd seen how much Bella loved Edward, and something like that couldn't just be erased from his memory. He felt like that for Bella, and he knew how deeply that type of love could scar.

When he didn't answer, she pushed further. "Is it Leah?"

_Jesus_. Jacob closed his eyes over the top of Bella's head, focusing his energy into not flinching at the name. He wanted to know which part of him was reacting, convinced that it was the physical. In the absence of sex, there had been tantalizing touches, kisses that drew something out of him that he barely had the strength to share.

Jacob tried to tell himself that that was all that it was: if he and Leah had had sex, he could have gotten her out of his system. He didn't love Leah Clearwater. He was merely stimulated by her—a need that hadn't been met.

"Sure, I guess," he said. "I—I just don't know how the pack will function short one member."

She tilted her head back, lifting her mouth at an angle that would have easily accepted a kiss. Jacob was glad—for once—that his life was interrupted by someone knocking on his front door. He didn't want to kiss Bella when he was thinking of Leah. He didn't want to be that guy.

The hell of it was that he would probably end up being that guy anyway.

"That's problem them." He pulled away from Bella. "I'll be right back."

She let him go. "Okay. I guess I'll try to fix the bacon situation."

There was a hopeful edge to her voice, but he couldn't say what it was that she wanted him to respond to. He nodded his head, not knowing if she even saw it, unable to give her anything else at the moment.

Moving through the house to the front door, Jacob thought that maybe he _should_ go after

her. They could have their roll in the sheets and be done with it. He could get her out of his system and go back to being Bella's martyr. He could suffer with only one misery rather than two.

Jacob stepped out onto the porch and shut the door behind him when he found that his visitor was Seth Clearwater. Maybe—just maybe—standing in the kitchen with Bella, talking about bacon, would have been easier than a confrontation with Leah's little brother, obviously there in concern for her.

Jacob could see that concern all over Seth's face—a face that was hardly "little" anymore. Seth was tall and almost more wiry than muscled, almost the build of a basketball star. Maybe he could have been, but Seth had opted for staying on the rez, taking up work at a bait and tackle shop, and selling himself short. But that was how it went. They all sold themselves short, because no one with the gene ever left the rez—hell, even normal people hardly ever left the rez. This was where they had to be—protecting their people, upholding the duty of their ancestors, being obedient dogs.

Leah apparently hadn't gotten the message. He wondered why he hadn't asked her if she'd forgotten that last night.

_Don't you remember, Leah? There's no_ _escaping_ this. _This is all there is_.

Jacob sighed in Seth's face, hardly up to dealing with his concerns on top of his own.

"You know?"

Jacob nodded. "Yeah."

"She told you?"

"Yeah."

"When?"

"Last night." Jacob paused, and then decided that he might as well tell him. "She came here."

Though he had no intention of phasing any time before he got his thoughts and feelings under control, Jacob decided to be forthcoming on at least this part of the truth. It would make everything else he had to hide easier if he picked the small stuff to be honest about.

He didn't think that Seth appreciated this honesty. The air around Seth seemed to feel colder, though the day was warm yet. Jacob's yard stretched out a wide distance, only gradually devoured by the trees. The only road to his house was gravel, and only his Rabbit and Bella's truck occupied the narrow driveway. But he felt ridiculously more secluded as Seth shared with him a moment of frigid, silent accusation.

Jacob studied him, wondering—bizarrely—if Seth _knew_.

"She came here?" Seth repeated. "Why did she come here? She didn't even tell _me_. She left a _note_."

Jacob shrugged. He didn't have to pretend like he was tired about the whole thing already, but he did have to work to hide the depth of his own interest in the matter. He didn't want Seth seeing through him.

"I don't know. I'm alpha. Maybe she felt like she _had_ to tell me."

Seth shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts, stiffening his spine where he stood and making himself appear even more freakishly tall than normal. He tilted his head to the side and stared down his nose. Jacob almost snorted, wondering where the kid got off thinking he could pull the intimidation act on him. Sure, Seth wasn't a kid anymore, but Jacob had no problem believing that he could still kick Seth's ass.

"So then why didn't you alpha-command her to stay?"

It was Jacob's turn to look annoyed. He glared at Seth, hating the way that he would never seem to understand how complicated things could be.

"She's not a dog, Seth. If she wants to go, that's her business."

Seth scoffed. "No, unfortunately, it's not. We're a pack. There's no leaving this. We're in this for life, remember? She can't just _leave_."

Jacob scowled as Seth's words pinged against his skin. He'd told Bella something like that once before, hadn't he?

_I'm in this for life_.

It was a life sentence—a sentence that dictated their every move. Seth hadn't pursued an athletic career, confining himself to the bait and tackle shop. Jacob himself hadn't gone on to anything either—though he wouldn't have known what to do with himself had he been given the chance—when he'd conformed to the needs of the pack. He did sporadic mechanic work to make his living. It wasn't as if bills were too expensive to pay living like that—not that he lived like a king—considering that real estate in La Push was hardly booming. The people that lived in La Push were the people that had always lived in La Push—the heirs to the men and women that had started the tribe here so long ago.

"No one can control your sister," Jacob tried instead.

"You sure?" Seth squared his shoulders. "She came to you here. She obviously valued your consent. Since your opinion is the only one that she seems to care about, maybe you should go after her and bring her back. My mom is really torn up about this."

Seth kicked at a raised board on the porch, bumping the toe of his shoe repeatedly. Jacob was well aware of his frustration, almost tempted to admit his own annoyance with Leah for leaving—for leaving _him_.

"She's never had any good sense," Seth continued. "Leaving mom without any warning. Our family has always been in La Push together. Her leaving was like dad dying, all of a sudden, and—"

Jacob interrupted him, "Are you trying to guilt me into going after Leah? There's no telling where she's even at by now, Seth."

Seth looked at him. "We're wolves, Jake. Tracking's our business."

Jacob didn't like the role reversal here, feeling like Seth's pupil rather than his instructor. He didn't have the damn time or energy to go after Leah. Seth should have dealt with his own problems and left Jacob's conscience out of it.

He was already tempted to chase Leah to wrangle that disgusting sense of sexual satisfaction that he was convinced would free him from her, and that was a seriously stupid reason to go. The best thing he could do was let her go, let her dissolve into another missed opportunity so that he wouldn't risk ruining Bella and whatever it was that he had for her.

And now Seth was going to try and guilt him into it? Make him feel responsible for Leah's carelessness?

"You go after her then."

Seth shook his head. "She'll know I'm coming, and she'll just keep running. If she runs from you, you can always just _command_ her to stay put."

Jacob didn't like how liberal Seth was being with the alpha-command. He had no idea what it felt like, making someone the prisoner of his own will. It was almost frightening, and the last thing he wanted to do was cage Leah. She'd never react well to that.

"Forget it. She'll come back when she's ready."

Seth made a face, but the look on Jacob's face kept him from insisting. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and took a step backward off of the porch.

"Fine. I'll go home, comfort my distressed mom, and hope that my sister isn't out there making more, even more reckless choices. See you, alpha."

Seth was on the grass then, and he whirled on his heel and stomped off. Jacob stared after him for a long second before turning and going back into his house. It was all he could do not to throw something at Seth's retreating back.

Seth had no idea how _he_ felt about Leah's desertion.

"What was that all about?"

Bella had fried up the rest of the bacon that had been left after his failed attempt. She'd even made eggs too. Both were stacked on a plate that she set in front of him. Her own plate was similar but smaller, because he always ate more.

"Seth. Wants me to go and find Leah and bring her back."

At the moment, he barely felt like eating one piece of bacon. But he sat there anyway, at the kitchen table, and shoved a piece of bacon into his mouth.

Bella held her own piece of bacon between her thumb and pointer finger, waving it in the air—like a wand—as she spoke.

"Well, I'm sure Sue and him are pretty worried. Why doesn't he go look for her?"

The bacon tasted strangely sour in his mouth. He kept his eyes on his plate, lifting and dropping one shoulder.

"I'm the only one she can't keep running from if she senses me coming. I can alpha-command her to stay."

Bella pursed her lips. "That doesn't seem like something that Leah would respond well to."

Jacob snorted. "Definitely not."

She'd probably castrate him the moment he allowed her to move again—viciously, just with her bare hand, ripping it off. Jacob winced just thinking about it, though it would solve his main excuse for not going after her: the possibility that he might not be completely free from the needs of his own dick. If he didn't have one, he couldn't have sex with her, and all need for Leah would finally be gone. It was a horrible solution.

He heard Bella drop her bacon back onto her plate.

"Maybe you should go after her."

Jacob nearly choked. "Why?"

He looked up at her, but she merely shrugged.

"Seth's right. You're the only one that can get to her. Maybe you can figure out why she ran and help her work past it. You said yourself that the pack is a member short and that makes everything off." Bella paused, drumming two fingers on the table. "If she had to run in the middle of the night, then something is obviously wrong. Someone needs to help her."

Jacob said nothing, only stared at her. It seemed ridiculous to him that it was Bella urging him to do the one thing that might ruin the bubble of their little "utopia" together. She didn't know that, of course, but it was still unsettlingly ironic. Especially since Jacob had never been able to deny Bella anything she asked of him—almost as if she had the alpha-command in her.

"Look, I know Leah's a difficult person, but maybe you should at least try to help," Bella said. "Besides, Charlie's been wanting to see more of me. I could spend some time with him while you're gone."

Bella shouldn't have been the one giving him an easy way out, a perfect opportunity to do exactly what he wanted and chase after Leah. It was wrong, and it would be wrong of him to abuse it. If he went after Leah, nothing good would come of it. He was better off staying where he was.

"I'll think about it," he said.

()()()()()

**LPOV**

It annoyed her that she hadn't gotten very far: just on the other side of Seattle. She'd meant to go farther. She'd meant to never stop driving until she ran into the ocean or the end of the world. But all sorts of strings were pulling her back, and so she'd have to start with baby steps.

When she'd spotted the For Rent sign, she'd known that she wasn't going to be able to go any further for now.

The apartment was on the second floor of a spacious, two-story white house. She had no idea who lived beneath her, nor did she car. A stairway on the side of the house led her up to her place, and that was where she went, directly after paying her first month's rent. No time to stop and study the small scrap of yard, the empty flower bed next to her stairs—straight up to her apartment where she stepped in and dropped her bags.

The air was musty, slightly stale from being shut up with no one living there, but she didn't care. The walls and carpet were a neutral white, ready for her to make impressions upon them with no previous judgments of her.

There first thing that she did was sprawl across her living room floor, nose pressed to the carpet.

"Goodbye, La Push and Sam Uley," she said, and then, quieter, "Goodbye, Jacob Black."


	4. Paint Me a Way Out

**Author Notes: **Taking a second to apologize for the amount of time it took to get this update out. Senior year of college has turned out to be just as hectic and demanding as I expected. Sorry to keep you guys waiting, and sorry even more for the fact that it will probably continue this way until May. I have so many reading and writing assignments that it's difficult to keep my head above water! I appreciate your patience though, and I hope you all continue to enjoy my fic!

* * *

**JPOV**

He let the idea of chasing Leah float around in the back of his mind for a few days, feeling that, if he gave it time to settle over him, maybe he'd change his mind about chasing her—maybe he'd stop hearing _Bella_ giving him an easy excuse to go. He spent all of one day and half a night working on an older La Push woman's busted up car—likely to never run again—in an attempt to drown his thoughts of Leah.

When that didn't work, he spent the next day carving—something he did occasionally in his free time. He ended up carving a wolf that looked damningly like Leah's wolf, and he'd growled at the finished project before tossing it into a trash can in the kitchen.

The day after that, he devoted to lawn work. His yard was expansive and unruly with weeds. Normally, he mowed his immediate stretch of yard, allowing weeds and wild flowers to take over the outer reaches, but that day he mowed everything. He mowed until his mower became choked with the weeds that had grown too tall to tame.

The fruitless mechanic work, the carving, the mowing—all of it only exasperated him further. Leah wouldn't stay floating quietly in the back of his mind. She rose up at every moment of opportunity to plague him. Even on the nights in between those days in which he shared his bed with Bella and touched and kissed her bare skin.

He was getting hard, because he was thinking about Leah—about the time that Bella had gone into Port Angeles with her friend, Angela, and Leah had come over. It had been reckless, but she'd shown up, sliding almost into his body when he'd opened the door, and she'd kissed him square on the mouth.

There hadn't been a question in his mind as to whether or not he was the only man that Leah had been thinking about. He couldn't stop wondering where she'd gone and what lengths she would go to in order to erase him from her thoughts. When she'd left La Push behind, she'd left him too, which meant that he was also one of those things that she was trying to forget.

It shouldn't have been so easy for her.

Jacob scowled as he flicked through television channels, seated stiffly on his leather couch in the living room. Why shouldn't it have been? Their relationship had been no strings attached, a mutual escape. They'd never discussed their feelings, presumably having none.

Outside of their haven, they were a bad match, and they both knew it. Leah had been looking out for herself when she'd left, and he had no right to blame her. He was only frustrated because, sexually, his needs had never been met, and Leah hadn't exactly been kind about withholding. If anything, she'd enjoyed tempting him, and that was the only reason he was still hooked. Sexual frustration was a bitch.

It was his excuse, and he was going to stick to it.

"Jake?"

He started, roused from his thoughts to realize that he was hitting the mute button instead of the channel button, and that he was muting and unmuting a children's cartoon, which had likely drawn Bella to the room.

She had a bundle of laundry in her arms and was staring at him over the top of it.

"Oh, hey, Bells, I said I'd do the laundry this week."

She shrugged, causing a sock to fall from the heap in her arms. He rose to retrieve it for her, placing it carefully on the top of her pile, and leaning forward to give her a quick kiss as her lips puckered expectantly. It felt disturbingly platonic.

His fault, he knew.

"No big deal. You've been under pressure."

"Under pressure?" he repeated.

She nodded, turned, and started walking down the hall toward the laundry room. He followed her, but she didn't speak again until she'd loaded the washer and turned it on.

"I know Leah leaving has put pressure on you. Your pack's incomplete, and everyone's looking toward you to fix it," she said. "I mean, the past three days alone you've been going to great lengths to occupy yourself."

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, and Jacob followed her gesture, looking out the little window behind her. He frowned at the sight of his lawn. The backyard had been where the mower had given out, and so it looked as if it'd been given a bad haircut.

"Our yard has definitely looked better." She dropped her hand to the pocket of her jeans then, pulling out a little wooden sculpture. "And then I found this in the trash. I thought it was strange, since you take so much time to carve something this beautiful, and you've never thrown away anything before, but then I realized it sort of looks like Leah's wolf."

Jacob felt his face grow warm with guilt. He opened his mouth to make an excuse, to deny the resemblance, but nothing came out. For some reason, he expected that the carving had given away his darker secrets, but Bella's face didn't change from kind understanding. It almost made things worse. He wanted to look at the floor, but he kept his gaze on Bella.

The washing machine rumbled behind her, filling the silence that he took to grope for some kind of excuse. He felt the seconds crawl by, long, like hours, but she only stood there patiently, waiting for him to confess.

He stared at the sculpture sitting, still, in her outstretched hand. There was no denying that it looked like Leah's wolf. Maybe it was the expression on its face that gave it away—something slightly proud and slightly disdainful.

Jacob drew in a breath. "I—It's been difficult. Her absence makes me feel…off balance. Everyone's been moody, expecting me to do something."

In reality, the only one that had verbalized any such thing had been Seth. The pack had a scheduled cycle for scouting around La Push, keeping the boundaries secure, and given that the Cullen's were gone and no more vampires had appeared since them, there wasn't that big of a need for them to all meet and talk. He'd been able to easily avoid the pack, and no one other than Seth had sought him out.

He sensed their discomfort, their restlessness that the pack wasn't a whole with one member missing, but he had yet to address it. He still hadn't gotten his thoughts under control, and the last thing Jacob wanted to do was phase and share them with the pack.

Bella nodded. "I figured as much. I ran into Sue this morning when I went to get groceries."

"Oh? What'd she say?"

He really didn't want to know. It was hard enough to convince himself that his own reasons didn't warrant a need to go after Leah, and Seth had already tried to use Sue to guilt him into it once. It would just be an easy excuse for him to latch onto, an easy way to justify going after Leah so that he could ignore any sense of guilt.

Bella reached for his hand, and the gesture made him feel like a child in need of comfort. He could remember when her touch would have lit him on fire. When she rubbed her thumb across his knuckles now, he felt only a small stirring overshadowed by something that still didn't make sense to him.

"She's upset, of course, and worried about Leah being alone somewhere where she doesn't know anyone."

"Leah's pretty resilient."

Bella nodded.

"Has she heard from her?" he asked.

"No, not a word. I think it makes it worse for her, considering that she could just be ignoring everyone, or she could be in trouble."

Jacob doubted that Leah was in trouble. She was the strongest female that he'd ever met, and she had her wolf side to back her up. Mortal dangers didn't really apply to a werewolf.

"She'll turn up," he said, without conviction.

When Leah had something in her head, she wasn't going to let it go so easily. She'd left La Push, and so she was obviously serious about putting some distance between herself and the rez.

He stared down at Bella's hand in his. Bella was strong in her own right, but she wasn't like Leah. When Edward had left Bella, she'd broken like glass. When Leah's back was to the wall, she wouldn't let herself appear so fragile. She'd just leave before anyone could see.

Had he put her back to that wall?

"Jake."

"Hmm?"

"You should go and find her. Talk her into coming back."

Jacob looked up at her, feeling the irony of what she was asking. If he was the reason that Leah had left, he was the less likely person to get her to come back. And, if she did come back, what then? Would they still see each other in secret? Would he continue to betray Bella? Secrets like that wouldn't stay secret forever. He was lucky that Leah had left really, wasn't he?

Bringing her back would risk everything that he'd spent three years trying to build up.

Bella squeezed his hand, and he felt the guilt like it was a physical presence.

Maybe it was time to face it. Maybe he should go after Leah and resolve everything so that it could all go back to normal.

_Hey, sorry, this was all a mistake._

"I told Charlie I'd spend the week with him. He talked me into going fishing."

She was making it easy for him. She was too good for him. The least he could do was confront Leah about the mess that they'd made and tie up all the loose ends. Then he could do the right thing and come back and be with Bella and only Bella.

Right? _Right_.

"Are you sure? Who knows how long it'll take to convince her, let alone find her."

"Sure." She smiled. "I'll be fine. Just keep me updated. Everyone will feel better once this whole mess is resolved."

He returned her smile, though it weighed significantly heavier on his face.

()()()()

**LPOV**

"Fuck, I'm on awesome painter."

Leah smirked at what she'd managed to paint onto her once-morbidly white and blank wall. At best, the drawing of a lake scene looked like a child's water color drawing, but it was the fact that she'd done it that swelled her chest with pride. Really, she was a terrible artist, but they were her walls to paint on while she lived there, and her first project had been the long, windowless stretch of wall in her living room. Considering she had only two bags of clothes and no furniture to her name, she'd needed something to spruce up her living space.

Nothing had even been so uniquely her own.

And she needed that possessive edge to establish herself in a new place, to help her block out memories of Jake. Leah scratched her chin, irritated that he'd cropped up in her thoughts again, and smeared paint along the line of skin there.

She didn't bother to wipe it away. She was mostly covered in it anyway. Flecks of paint dotted her arms and the pair of overalls she'd bought to paint in. Because it'd felt liberating, she'd worn only the overalls over a plain, white bra. There were specks of paint on the bra as well, which, like the walls, generally improved its appeal, in her opinion.

When she'd first started painting, she'd realized that she was trying to paint Jacob's face. She'd quickly blotched out the lines to form a tree instead, changing the entire scene to a lake view. She stared at it carefully and could still see the circles of Jake's eyes that she'd tried to turn into knobs on the tree trunk.

She pushed aside her irritation. It would take time to forget, she knew. It would take time to shed her skin and move past who and what she'd been in La Push. Painting her place was a good start.

In just a few, short days, she was already making the place her own. She was establishing herself.

She'd even been called for an interview for a local restaurant. She'd see how that turned out tomorrow, and, with any luck, she'd have a job along with her new place. Even if it was only a temporary stopping place for her, it felt like home.

When she could, she'd move on—drive further away from La Push—and, before she knew it, she was sure that she'd stop feeling that tug in her stomach that seemed to spell out Jacob's name.


	5. Bleed Like Rain

**JPOV**

As seldom as he liked to admit that Seth could be right, it wasn't that hard to find Leah.

She hadn't gotten very far away from La Push, which gave him a slight sense of satisfaction. Itm must have meant that she was having a hard time leaving him behind. He was glad that it hadn't been easy for her. He'd suffered severely over the last couple of days—unable to concentrate or function or look Bella in the face without feeling the need to flinch. He'd waited a few more days after Bella called him out about the yard and his wolf sculpture before he'd gone after her, and those had been torture as well.

He had half an idea to bang on the door to her new place and drag her out, demanding to know how she could be so selfish.

But he spent ten minutes just sitting in his car outside of her place, second-guessing himself, wondering, at the ten minute mark, how Leah hadn't caught whiff of him. It was dark by the time he'd reached the house, the end of the trail that smelled completely of Leah, and it was raining a little. The drizzle speckled his windshield as he stared up at the one lit, upstairs window.

He thought about turning around, going home, avoiding what could possibly be a big mistake. Maybe he was wrong about it all just being pent-up sexual need. Or maybe Leah had been right in leaving before it'd turned into something else.

Whatever the truth was, it was obvious that being with Leah put him on shaky ground. It'd be smart to go back to La Push, to take what he had with Bella and not question a sense of greater happiness. He could still remember all of those times he'd sworn to himself that he'd do anything to have Bella, even if it was only half of Bella.

The thought made him cut the engine, because the thought made him feel weak and desperate. He didn't want to be either of those, so he got out of his car and stood in the rain and told himself that he was an adult, that he could handle Leah, that, if nothing else, this was pack business, and he was responsible for keeping them together.

He started up the steps to her porch, wondering why she'd picked a place with so little nature. Her yard was barely a scrap of land with patchy grass. The houses were too close together, the trees were too few. Of course, it made perfect sense for someone that was trying to pretend that they weren't a wolf, he guessed.

Knowing that she was going to kill him—and thinking, too, of Bella back in La Push—Jacob lifted his hand and knocked on the door.

When Leah answered, he felt his tongue threaten to slide backwards down his throat. Her initial reaction was one of surprise—surprise that caused her to take a half of a step backward, swaying between slamming the door in his face and leaving it open.

He expected her to slam it, knew that he should say something to prevent it, but he only continued to stare at her paint-splattered body, her dirty overalls, and the bra that she wore underneath, and that was all that she wore—even her feet being bare.

And she was wearing purple toenail polish. He'd never seen her wear polish before.

Jacob stared at her bare feet, thinking that, though she'd crammed herself into a city, she was still very earthy in appearance.

"Leah."

The smell of fresh paint wafted out of the apartment behind her, and Jacob guessed why she hadn't detected his presence before he'd knocked. He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to pry his attention away from her choice of an outfit, but then he noticed the paint on her face and the blue spot on her elbow when she lifted her hand to push her hair behind her ear.

Silky hair curtaining an angular, but still soft, face. The look in her brown eyes could kill—was probably actually trying to kill him for finding her.

"Leah, we need to talk."

His voice was shaky and not his own.

"Talk?" she repeated, her voice sharp and strong. "You drove all the way here to _talk_?"

Her anger ground against his already raw nerves, annoyed that she seemed so indignant that someone would come after her, as if her leaving hadn't affected anyone. As if nothing had been going on between the two of them at all.

"Sure. You didn't leave a phone number, did you?" he snapped back.

The rain was picking up, pinging hard against the short corner of a roof that jutted out over her porch. The rain brought a chill, and he wondered if she could feel it passing through her overalls.

"For a _reason_," she said. "If you'd wanted to discuss me leaving, you had the opportunity when I showed up at your house."

"First of all, that was the middle of the night. I wasn't even functioning." He closed his right hand into a fist, marveling at how quickly Leah could make him angry. "Second, you can't just leave and expect no one to come after you."

"Yeah? Why not?"

"We're a pack, Leah," he growled. "Didn't you even at least think of your family? Seth's ready to kill you, and your mom is a nervous wreck."

She had one hand on the door, and he could see her knuckles turning white where she held it. It must have pissed her off to know that she was still responsible for other people outside of just herself, to be reminded that she could run but not hide. Her expression was growing darker and more reclusive by the second. She was sealing herself away.

"They'll understand eventually. Sorry you wasted a trip."

She started to shut the door in his face—actually started to shut it right in his face. His arm shot out and caught it, holding it steadily open though she tried to lean into it. He didn't ask her permission, but stepped right into her house, wedging himself in against the door.

"Really? You'd try to slam that in my face? I drove all the way here. You're at least going to hear me out."

It would have been reckless, but Seth's suggestion to use the alpha command on her actually crossed his mind. He could see the anger very clearly on Leah's face, and he knew she was going to be difficult—had known it even before he'd seen her. He could alpha-command her to let him in, sit her ass down, and tell him why she wouldn't come back to La Push.

But he knew why, didn't he? She tried to block him from stepping inside, but it only wedged them against one another as they tried to both stand in the tiny hall, pinned between the door and the first step of three that led up to her living room.

She struggled with the door and trying to push him back out of it for only a second before she realized, too, how close they were, and she froze. He could hear music playing now, softly. A female singer with a hard voice made for crooning. Music and paint were in the air, as well as a horrible, gnawing tension that started in his chest and spread hungrily outward.

It was like that first, unexplainable moment of need that had hit him behind the church at Sam and Emily's wedding. Seeing her in a moment of vulnerability, he had really _seen_ her like he never had before. Before, Leah had seemed just like another one of the guy's, if not slightly more exasperating and pissy. Behind the church, he could see her for what she really was: female, strong, but vulnerable and bruised. He had felt her responding need to his presence like a rope snapping taut between them, and that had been it.

Jake could feel it again as they stood there against one another, as if the warmth of Leah's body was sending little signals to his own, as if he could read her thoughts and what she was asking without saying a word.

He couldn't seem to stop himself from ducking his head forward, seeking her mouth, even as little warning bells reminded him of Bella, of how he shouldn't be doing this anymore. He could feel Leah tense up against him, could see the way her eyes became shadowed and shuttered all at once, kicking the needy woman inside of her into the dark.

"I swear to God, if you kiss me, I will knee you so hard you'll taste your balls in your mouth."

That brought him up short, despite the fact that her voice had sounded breathless and sexy when she said it. The way they were crammed into the hall together, Leah had a perfect shot at his crotch, one that he was sure that she would take. His hands shook slightly as he pulled back, leveling his best cold stare at her to return the one she was already shooting him.

"Sorry," he said, without feeling. "It's just that, sometimes, when I'm with you, I'm more animal than man. You sort of suck the soul right out of people, you know?"

She started to growl at him but must have been able to tell that it was what he wanted. She turned on her heel instead, stomping up the three steps and disappearing around a corner. She didn't invite him to follow, but he was still in the house, so he assumed that he could do what he wanted.

He stepped into the living room just as she was picking up a paint brush. She dipped it in red and went back to work as if he wasn't there. He let her have her moment of peace as he studied her work.

Leah wasn't an artist by any means, but he could still see that her heart was in the work she was doing. If she didn't understand shading or dimensions, she made up for it by painting more into the scene, so that there were too many things to look at to dwell on just one thing for too long.

Mostly, her painting was of nature scenes: plants, animals, a little lake view with the sun rising. Everything felt warm and real despite her skill. She was painting what she'd left behind, making a place for it inside her little apartment, because it was obviously nowhere to be seen in what little yard she had. He wondered if she realized that she was missing home already.

Despite the pack, the rules, the ancestry, and the crunching sense of responsibility, La Push was home. Leah knew that as well as he did.

"What are you missing the most?"

Leah's hand faltered for just a split second before the paint brush continued drawing in a Cardinal, but he could see that he'd struck a nerve—the little nerve she was trying to ignore, despite the fact that she had to be aware that she was painting La Push.

"Nothing."

Jake pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, because he wanted to cross the room to her and put them on her. A roll of thunder sounded outside just after a streak of light flashed behind the blinds of the window. He could hear the rain just over the sound of the music.

Watching her work, trying her best to ignore him, Jake momentarily envied her. He didn't believe that she wasn't missing La Push, but she'd had the strength to do something about her pain when he didn't. Then again, she didn't have someone relying on her.

"All right, let's try again. When are you planning to come back?"

"I'm not."

She didn't hesitate. Not that he expected her to. When she made up her mind about something, she generally stuck to it. It was one of those things that he didn't want to admire, especially since it was working against him. Especially since he didn't have the liberty to be so selfish himself.

"It's not that easy. You're part of the pack."

She shrugged, and it grinded against him.

"You guys can survive without me."

As much as he envied Leah for breaking free, he disliked her for it. He hadn't wanted to be a werewolf either, to have to live his life a certain way because of something that he was born with. He hadn't chosen to be a wolf, and he hadn't wanted to be alpha, but things just happened sometimes, and people were forced to be mature and handle those things like adults. Leah was dodging her responsibility, and it wasn't even as heavy as his was. It was just as cowardly as it was brave to run away.

Did she think that he had always wanted to stay in La Push, to take care of Bella, to forget his own needs for a greater sense of good that he wasn't even sure existed?

"It doesn't work like that. Even one person short, we're weaker. The gene's not just going to let you go either, Leah. Are you going to play city wolf out here? Turn your back on us? On your family?"

Leah's hand jerked, giving her Cardinal an extra wing. She hissed out a breath and attempted to round it out and fix the mistake.

"If something was to happen, I would come back, but La Push is obviously not in danger, and we have too many wolves to even know what to do with right now." She spoke each word carefully, pronouncing each syllable so as to lead him to believe that she was speaking through clenched teeth. "La Push needs maybe three wolves right now to monitor the place, and I'm not going to grow old wasting my life keeping an eye out for a threat that isn't there."

"Who does want that?" he snapped back, anger flaring automatically.

He wanted to know why she thought she was better than everyone else, deserved the freedom more than anyone else, even her own brother.

"I'm just saying, Black, take it how you want—betrayal, selfishness, denial—I don't care. I'm not coming back. If you're jealous, no one's keeping you there either." She paused. "Not really, anyway."

It was a discreet slap to the face, as if she'd been lying when she'd said she understood his reasoning for staying, even if she hadn't approved. She was making fun of him for choosing Bella over himself, for being weak. Hurt curdled with anger, and he couldn't remember how he'd pictured a different Leah behind the church or a few moments ago at the door. She was cold and bitter and self-serving.

"Yeah, I think you're selfish, cold, and unfeeling. You piss me off, and I didn't even want to come here to get you to begin with. If it wasn't for the pack, I'd have let you move to Alaska. If it wasn't for your mom, I'd tell you that we don't need your weak, cowardly ass anyway," he snapped. "Leah, _look_ at me."

She whirled around so fast he thought that she was preparing to lunge at him, dig in her claws and forcefully throw him out of her house. But the look on her face was one of shock, and he realized, as the shock turned to anger, that he'd accidently used the alpha-command on her. He felt slightly guilty for having done so, but still a grin started to spread across his face.

"Jacob."

He barely saw the thin line of her lips move.

"I'm going to kill you."

"No, you're going to _listen_ to me."

He did it again, but this time he sort of meant to. He hadn't driven to her house just to be turned out and humiliated. If she wasn't going to come back, he was at least going to have his say. As he told her to listen, her arms went down, flat against her sides. The paint brush in her hand smeared a line of red on the leg of her pants. Her lips were pressed so tightly together that they were almost invisible, but the fury in her eyes spoke volumes.

"I'm sorry that you're jealous that I have feelings for Bella, that, unlike you, I have a sense of compassion, and I can't always put myself first, but I never expected you to be a coward and run away," he said.

He watched her face as he called her jealous, but she only seemed to get angrier. Fine, he'd take that. If she was going to jab him about Bella, he would jab her back.

"We were pretty clear when we started our stupid affair. I thought you understood my…my obligations, but, if you're really this spineless and petty, I'm glad you left, even though your family doesn't deserve it."

He knew that it was a lie telling her that he was glad that she'd left, and he was lying to himself saying that he hadn't started wanting something more from her too. They'd agreed to no-strings-attached, but that hadn't meant that his feelings hadn't started to change. He knew why she'd run from it, but he could still resent her for it.

"If you're pissed off at me, it's no reason to take it out on everyone else. All you had to do was say the word, and we could have ended it."

It probably would have killed him, but it would have been better. He wouldn't have had to have been on the other side of Seattle right now trying to convince her to go back home.

"Either way, you have responsibilities that you can't hide from. Stay here and try all you like, but they'll just keep coming back and finding you. If you want my opinion though—and you probably don't—you owe your mom something more than leaving in the middle of the night."

He drew in a breath, steeling himself for her retaliation.

"All right, you can _speak_ now."

Leah's joints seemed to loosen automatically. Whatever the alpha-command did to hold her to his will, it let her go, and her lips—though still pinched hard together—reappeared. She stood for a moment without saying anything, but he could practically feel a scream building in her throat. She dropped her paint brush, and it fell at her feet onto the plastic covering she'd spread out. It hit handle-first, and then the bristles fell over with a wet flop, a kiss of red paint.

She was probably freeing her hands to attack him. He could practically see her muscles coiling. Her nostrils flared as she drew in a deep breath.

"Get out."

It was fairly mild compared to the retaliation he'd expected, and, though his entire mission had been to bring her back, he was kind of glad she'd given him the invitation to leave. He could go back home and tell them all that she was the same ice queen as always, and there was no getting her to come back.

"Sure." Gladly.

Maybe he'd been wrong about everything. Maybe she had felt nothing for him at all. Maybe she'd just been using him as much as he'd been using her, and he'd overanalyzed it. Some stupid part of him had half expected her to fall into his arms the second she'd opened the door. He hadn't allowed himself to admit that when he'd climbed the steps of her porch, but it was there now, glaringly obvious, and he was embarrassed.

He gave a grunt that sounded almost like a goodbye and turned away from her. He was down the three steps quick, but out the front door and down the porch steps even faster. The rain pelted him as soon as he stepped onto the porch, but he ignored it, ducked his head, and hurried to his car.

He was soaked by the time that he was behind the wheel of his Rabbit, and it had taken only about fifteen seconds for him to get there. Feeling defeated and humiliated, he shoved the key into the ignition and turned it.

()()()()

**LPOV**

She remained standing next to the wall even though her knees were shaking. It'd taken all she had to keep them firmly locked until he'd left. She didn't want to feel hurt about how he'd ridiculed their relationship, so she concentrated on sliding into the anger instead. If she was angry, she could move past it faster.

She could forget how devastating it'd been to her new resolve when she'd opened her front door to find him there. Yeah, so maybe she'd fantasized a little about him coming after her, but it had all gone differently in her head. It wasn't nearly so romantic when it happened in real life, though she was kind of glad, because it had been easier to tell him to get the hell out.

And he'd used the alpha-command on her, the bastard. She had a right to be who she was, to believe what she wanted, and to leave if she chose to. If he'd come to convince her to go back, then he should have been prepared for her refusal. How dare the prick _make_ her listen to him?

She'd wanted to physically swing out, but, for the sake of her own sanity, she'd chosen just to get him out of her sight before she broke down. The last thing she wanted to do was break down in front of him. That'd give him too much enjoyment, because he'd know that he'd affected her.

He could go back to La Push and go straight to hell with Bella, for all she cared. She was over their ordeal. It was the past. She wasn't that weak anymore. Next time she fell for someone—actually fell for someone—it'd be someone that could love her too. She wasn't going to be second best to anyone ever again.

Jacob had called her selfish, and he was the one that wanted two people, unable to choose just one. It made her feel not quite good enough, and she wanted to kick his ass for it. If she'd had to listen to any more of his self-righteous bullshit, she would have thrown up.

And to think he'd tried to _kiss_ her.

Leah jolted as she heard her front door open and close again.

"Jacob?"

She scowled, because her voice came out like a squeak. _Of course_ it was Jacob. She could smell him, tell it was him by how heavy his feet were on the steps. When he rounded the corner and appeared in the doorway of the living room, she wasn't surprised, even though her heart was thumping in her chest.

He looked as angry as she felt, and he was soaked through with rain. They stared at each other in silence, and she was somewhere between anger and hurt. Hadn't he heard her tell him to get out? That had meant that she wanted him to leave and not come back.

"What are you doing?"

A few drops of rain slid from his clothes to the floor.

"The Rabbit won't start. It's dead."

_Damn it_. Who the hell was out there messing with her right now? She stared at Jake, feeling some of her anger fading despite her best attempt to hold onto it. He looked too defeated, soaked with rain, a miserable expression on his face—as if he'd have rather slept under the porch than be there right then waiting for her to offer him a place to sleep.

That was what he was waiting for—though he didn't seem to want to actually ask. She folded her arms over her chest and waited him out. Enough time passed for her to be able to question why they had ever gotten together, even remotely. They were both stubborn—polar opposites. Even now, she wanted to punch him.

Finally, he growled. "Can I just use your phone?"

She waited. If she went for the phone, she risked throwing it at him. It was strange wanting to hurt someone and be with them at the same time.

_ Jesus. Did she really want to be with him still? _

"Just sleep on the couch. Throw your clothes in the dryer, and I'll find you something to wear. You can deal with it in the morning." She lifted her chin. "But don't fucking talk to me."

Her room was to the left when coming up the stairs, so she had to walk past Jacob in order to get to it. When she did, she made sure to brush hard against his shoulder.

This was a bad idea. She should have let him go.


	6. Project: Don't Fail Me

**Author Notes: **Two updates in one day = productive day! The reasoning? I'm on spring break. I thought about keeping this chapter to myself until tomorrow to give Chapter 5 a little time to bask in the spotlight, but I've got several things planned for Spring Break, and who knows if I'll be around my computer tomorrow. Anyway, I've made you guys wait so long before, why not release an early reward? As always, I appreciate and love the reviews. If you're reading and not reviewing, I still love you for reading. =) But please do leave a review if you have the time! I like to know how well my chapters are being received, including the story as a whole.

If you'd like to receive updates from me about my posting schedule, you should follow me on twitter. I'm restlessxpen on there too. That way you'll know when to be expecting updates or if one is going to take longer than usual. Having said that, enjoy the chapter. ;)

* * *

**LPOV**

She couldn't sleep. There was this horrible ache between her thighs that was ridiculous and tantalizing and wouldn't let her catch even a brief moment of sleep. She could smell Jacob—he was all over her house, so thick that it covered the smell of paint. The horrible clawing need had been what had chased her out of La Push, and now it was back again, and all she wanted to do was go to the living room and wake him up in the worst way possible.

Her fingers knotted in the bed sheets, because she couldn't let herself need him like this. Even if it was only a half-baked illusion on his part, he was with Bella, had made himself belong to her, like a dog. He was out of her reach. She'd known that all along—had felt it in their brief, steamy meetings when he'd reached for her out of physical need, and she knew it, because she couldn't feel his heart in it.

If he'd told her, when she'd opened the door, that _he_ needed her to come back to La Push, she might have—she just might have. But that was her illusion, one that she wouldn't let herself cave to. She wasn't Bella Swan. She didn't need a man to survive, and this wouldn't break her. If she was yearning for him, that was just physical too. Their bodies responded to each other, not their hearts.

He shouldn't have been an idiot, shouldn't have come after her, should have sent someone else. She would have rather have faced Sam, and that was saying something. Sam was easy, because those feelings had paled until they were almost obsolete. Sam had imprinted—there was no hope there.

But Jacob hadn't.

And neither had she.

Leah gritted her teeth. It was yet another reason why they should stay away from one another. At any second, they could imprint, and one of them would go away heartbroken. She wouldn't be able to stand feeling like that again. It was worse than death, knowing that there was nothing she could do to change it.

The morning wouldn't come soon enough. In the morning, she could boot him out, make him fix his car and get the hell back to La Push where he belonged. Until then, she would suffer through the damningly slow passing time. It was after midnight, and still there were hours left to go, and she would be stuck there, breathing him in.

He smelled like pine and sweat and strength with a tinge of rain. He smelled earthy, like home. She could also smell his simmering frustration that lingered on after he'd fallen asleep.

Jacob was snoring—had been snoring almost since he'd hit the couch. It just wasn't fair that he could be so unaffected, that he wasn't lying there thinking about her stretched out in bed. Had their encounter so thoroughly exhausted him?

Probably. _She_ was exhausted, but it was the type of exhaustion that slipped past sleep into that unwelcoming realm where her brain wouldn't shut down. It was all the stupid physical tension between them that had never been sated.

His body was Bella's. Hers was her own, not to be shared without equal compensation. Sex would make things even worse, binding them into a sticky, ultra-strength spider web that they couldn't escape. The last thing she wanted was to need Jacob on an emotional level too. She'd end up having to murder Bella, and she was sure that wasn't the way to win Jacob over.

Not that she wanted to win Jacob over, since he so obviously didn't want her.

He'd come after her just to slam her with guilt, embarrass her over the idea that she might have left to escape him, and she was lying in bed, tormented by the idea of his dick. That's what it was—not his face, or the sculpt of the rest of his body, not that smell that had wound into her senses.

It was still raining outside—a chorus of drops against her window to make a tune for Jacob's rhythmic snoring. He snored so loud, how did he expect her to sleep?

Leah threw the covers back and slid out of bed. If he asked, she'd say that his snoring had woken her, wouldn't admit that she'd been awake all this time. It was her own house, and so she had the right to wander around it in the middle of the night if she needed a drink of water, and she logically had to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen.

Her bare feet were soundless against the carpet, and she followed the orange ball of the nightlight glowing in the living room. The couch was the only piece of furniture she'd gotten so far—outside of her bed, which didn't count, because the bed had been left in the apartment by the last tenants.

She had the couch pushed up against the wall opposite the one she'd been painting, because she liked to sit there and stare at her work. She'd done so after her first day at Denny's, where she'd gotten a job two days ago. It was meager part time work—her schedule consisting of a whopping three days a week, but it was something, and she got tips. She didn't work again for a few days, which she was regretting now, because it would have been an excuse to get out of the house while Jacob fixed his car.

Turning the corner into the living room, Leah stopped at the end of the couch. Jacob was sleeping on his back, an arm thrown over his forehead, his mouth part-way open. The smell of him was even more real as she looked him over. She wished that he wasn't so handsome, that she wasn't standing there staring at the hard lines of his chest and stomach while he slept in just a pair of her baggiest shorts.

She drew her gaze away as a light blinked at her on the floor next to him. She smirked as she recognized his cell phone and bent to retrieve it.

So he had come back in expecting her to offer him a place to stay. If he'd needed to call someone, he'd had a phone of his own to use. He had just been trying to save face by pretending like he didn't need her. Maybe he'd actually felt like shit for using the alpha-command on her and had realized that he didn't deserve any favors from her.

It was probably something reasonable like that—had to be—and not that he had just wanted to spend more time with her. If that had been his purpose, he wouldn't have been on the couch, let alone asleep. Probably arrogant of her to think, but she'd seen the way his body had changed when they'd stood just inside the door together. And it'd been so hard not to react to the change, the swell of heat, the firm scent of arousal.

She thought about waking him up, asking him if he wanted to make amends before he fucked off in the morning and left her alone to work through, and out of, her misery. They could make amends in a physical way, a using way. She felt that she was justified in using him after all the times he'd used her only to return back to the girl that actually was just using him. He could have been something other than a safety vest if he'd just chosen her over Bella.

But no, whatever that whiny, pitiful, self-serving bitch had going for her, everyone wanted it. She'd probably never understand why. Bella came off looking like a martyr, but if she started acting like that, everyone would just tell her to get over herself.

The screen of the phone blinked again, and she looked down at it. Jacob had a new text message.

She really should have been more reluctant about prying into his privacy, but, if he'd been worried about that, he shouldn't have left it on the floor. It was the middle of the night, and she couldn't sleep because of him, so she deserved to entertain herself any way that she saw fit, right? Pursing her lips, she used her thumb to flip the phone open. A weight sunk to the pit of her stomach.

The message was brief:

_Just checking in. Any progress with Leah? Dad and I are having fun, but I miss you. _

_-Bella_

Any _progress_? Leah closed the phone, wondering what exactly she was to Jacob: a project? Somehow, it made it worse that Bella knew that he'd come after her. She could only imagine how Jacob had rationalized the need to. It'd have been for the pack, of course. He probably assured Bella that she was an annoyance, and that he'd rather do anything but have to come after her, but he had to be responsible for the pack.

The martyr that she was, Bella would have understood—made it all too easy for him to come after her without exposing himself.

Leah felt her earlier anger rising to the surface again, starting to boil in a dangerous way. She inhaled through her mouth and exhaled heavily through her nose, telling herself that phasing and destroying her new place wasn't worth it. Jacob wasn't worth it.

She wouldn't let him be.

But, because she needed to retaliate in some way to the insult of the text message, she threw his phone at him. It bounced hard against his chest and brought him awake with a start, leaving a splotch of red skin where it hit him. He grunted, swinging his arms as he sat straight up and looked around, bleary-eyed.

Finally, he focused on her.

"Jesus, Leah, what the hell?"

He brought a hand up to his chest, rubbing the red mark, glancing around to see what she'd struck him with. He spotted the phone on the couch beside him and quickly looked back up at her, as if he was afraid that she would strike again.

"You're a lying, spineless son of a bitch," she spat.

And it felt good having said it. Anger was always easier and safer. Much better than the longing she'd felt earlier. She was glad that she'd read his text, that he'd inadvertently put the fuel back into her fire again.

"I'm sure you've called me that before," he said, dryly. "Are you being spiteful waking me up in the middle of the night to tell me again? Or is there a special occasion?"

"I just thought you should know—you should always be aware. You come after me, insulting me, but I'm not the one sticking around and lying to everyone. Bella's so precious, but you've been cheating on her with me." Leah sneered. "What lie did you feed her to get to come here?"

That brought him fully awake. He stared at her in the darkness, and she read guilt all over his face and knew that her suspicions were correct. Even if he had come for her out of his own need, he still hadn't let go of Bella, and that was the only thing that mattered. She was just a side project that he couldn't let go of. He was too weak.

To think that she'd considered waking him up by jumping his bones.

"So, I deserve that," he said, slowly. "I told you I didn't want to come after you, and that was true, because I know that I've—I've been using you. Maybe it was in our agreement, but it doesn't make it right. I don't want to be that person, Leah, but I can't let go of Bella."

She wouldn't fall for that pitiful tone of voice. She wouldn't feel bad, because he seemed so defeated again. She would recognize that it was never going to work between them. She would acknowledge that he felt Bella like cancer, and she was never going to not be a part of his life.

Her voice was cold when she said, "I almost feel sorry for you."

She turned to go back to her room, but Jacob stood, catching her wrist. Her skin warred between fire and ice underneath his hand. She wanted to jerk it away, but she'd also missed his touch.

"Don't," she warned.

"We should talk."

She made herself wrench her arm away, and he let her.

"There's nothing to talk about as long as Bella is in the picture."

He let her go when she walked away.

()()()()

**JPOV**

He dropped himself back onto the couch as Leah strode away. She didn't slam her door, but he could hear the catch click, and he knew that she'd shut it quietly against him. The thickness of her anger and hurt remained in the air after her, and it mixed confusingly with his own feelings. Underlying it all, he could sense arousal. His or hers, he didn't know. It just always seemed to be present when they were near one another, whether or not it made any sense.

It was just a recognition.

Jake picked up his phone, flipped it open, and looked for the text that he knew he must have received. He found it, read it, and knew why it had triggered Leah's reaction. Bella seemed perfectly fine with him being there, and so Leah must have assumed, and rightly, that he hadn't told her the truth.

Shouldn't she have assumed that from the beginning? If Bella hadn't still been there, why would he have let their first meeting be so platonic and removed? Unless she assumed that he had really just been using her all along, that he had really felt nothing at all.

He couldn't blame her for it, because that was what it looked like.

And now he looked and felt even worse, because he had come back into her house and ask for a place to stay for the night. She knew now that he'd had a phone and could have called help for himself, and so he looked like an even bigger asshole for not having done so. She would assume that he had weaseled his way into spending the night so that he could torment her some more.

Dropping his phone, Jacob pressed his palms to his eyes and sighed. He'd botched the entire ordeal. He'd wanted to come and see if there was a way to settle what was between them—he'd messed that up. He'd thought to convince her to come back either way—he'd really screwed that over. No way she'd come back now. Not on his life.

There would be no resolution for him and his feelings, and he would have to go back home empty-handed, disappointing Sue, Seth, and the others.

Pressing his palms harder, he watched stars bloom into his vision.

He couldn't go back to La Push like this. He'd live in agony and lies. He wouldn't be able to face Bella, because he had betrayed her, and no one had made that clearer than Leah just had. All this time, he'd thought he'd been protecting Bella, but, in a way, he was just as bad as Edward, even if Bella was only giving him half of herself as well.

Picking his phone back up, he opened the screen to send a message to Bella.

_There's something wrong w/ my car. Stuck here for the time being. Just as well. Leah's going to need some persuading. Stubborn as ever. Miss you too._

_-Jake_

He hit send and stuffed his phone into his pocket, making a mental note not to leave it lying around again. Settling back onto the couch with guilt rolling around his stomach, he tried to think up a good excuse to extend his stay with Leah.

He was going to fix this, whatever it was.


	7. The Broken Things

**JPOV**

He kept his phone in his pocket as he made a show of going out to his car in the morning. He was still in Leah's pair of baggy, gray gym shorts, but the rain had stopped, and the cooled air felt good on his chest as he popped the hood of the Rabbit. He looked the inside over, knew that the whole thing was probably just a matter of getting someone to jump his car.

Pursing his lips, he leaned in, pinched a wire between his fingers and pulled it free, ending a vital connection. Even if someone tried to jump his car now, it wouldn't have started. Jacob worked up his best expression of frustration as he pulled his phone out and rounded the car to the trunk where he retrieved a wrench.

Leah didn't know anything about cars. As long as she looked out her window and saw that he appeared to be pissed off and working a wrench under the hood of his car, she wouldn't know any better. Rounding his car again, Jacob leaned in, held the wrench down by the engine, and pretended to crank it.

He opened his phone, pushed in a number, and held it against the side of his face that wasn't in open view from the house. While he listened to the ring, he wondered what Leah was doing. She hadn't left her room, but he'd sensed that she was awake. He'd made enough noise to make sure that she was in either case.

Still, she'd pointedly remained behind closed door until he was out of the house. She was probably taking breakfast by now, thinking that she should probably offer him some, but deciding, cruelly against it. She'd see him starve first.

Or maybe she'd gone straight to the shower, hoping to wash his scent off of her, because, even without touching, the smell of their bodies was the primary scent swirling around the house. Jacob scowled at that. He didn't like that she could read his emotions—if they became too strong—just by sniffing the air. He needed a certain level of subtlety to deal with Leah. Anything he felt too strongly could wind up pissing her off.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Bells."

"Jake? Is everything okay? What happened to your car?"

He felt a strange ping in the pit of his stomach. Bella's concern seemed real enough, but it still rang with a certain lack of sincerity, as if they were moving through the motions only. Stupid. It was only because he'd wanted once, so much, for her to care about his well-being. Now that he had that compassion, he didn't trust it.

"I'm not sure. It's just old, you know. But I can fix it." He closed his eyes. "It'll just take some time is all."

Time to fix Leah, who was what was really broken here. At the very least, his relationship with Leah. He felt bad for lying, feeling like he should really cut that habit out of his life as soon as possible, but it was necessary for now. Despite how Leah had stabbed him by pointing out that he was only lying and cheating on Bella, he wasn't ready to speak the truth until he knew what the truth was.

"Can't you call someone to help?"

He continued to work his arm as if he was cranking the wrench.

"You know me, I have to fix it myself. Besides, it's proving more difficult than expected to convince Leah to come home."

"Oh," Bella said, at length. "All right, well, I'll just keep spending time with Charlie until you get back. He likes the company."

Jacob clanked the wrench against the engine to add appropriate sound effects just incase Leah was being overly observant. He doubted it. She probably didn't want to look at him any more than she had to.

"Sounds fun."

"Your dad was asking about you."

Jacob's hand stilled. "What'd you say?"

"He knew about Leah running. He seemed glad that you'd gone after her, if not a little doubtful about your chances of success."

"Sounds like dad. Look, I better go. I've got to get this done."

He wasn't sure if he meant to refer to Leah or his car.

"Call me later. See you, Jake."

"Bye, Bells."

()()()()

**Edward POV**

He'd never felt so hollow, yet so completely made of marble, filled with rock. He had taken to sitting for long hours on the couch—spilling stuffing like milky vomit from one of its plaid, green cushions—forgetting to breath, reminding himself to breathe, going through the motions of breathing. The motions made him feel sane, but they also made him feel even less human. What human had to remind himself to breathe?

He took a deep breath, blew it out, reminded himself to blink and not to think of Bella. Tonya was rifling around the house, like a real human. It was her house, sunk into snow drifts, placed remotely in Alaska. She liked the cold, the hours of complete darkness. She liked the perfect habitat for vampires, and yet she was also uniquely human. She wore plain clothes and light makeup and seldom fixed her hair into anything flashy. She underplayed her beauty and made a show of going to the grocery store, buying food.

She'd invited human guests over for dinner, and she ate human food with them, forcing herself to crunch the lettuce of salads between her teeth, swallow, and smile. She was hospitable and everyone liked her, and, when she introduced him to her new, mortal friends, she called him her husband, Edward Cullen. And she was Tonya Cullen.

And he went along with it, because pressing himself so firmly into the mold of a vampire family—like Rose and Emmett, and Alice and Jasper—would surely convince him that this was his "natural" path in life. If he could just make himself care for Tonya, he could forget Bella. He could stop trying to convince himself to go back to her, because he knew that it would ruin her life. It would _steal_ her life.

Alice had told him that Bella was safe and happy, and that was enough. He imagined that her safety and happiness was with Jacob—having read the man's thoughts before—but he told himself that it didn't matter. She would have the human life she deserved.

She might even have children. She might even get married.

She might have done both already, but he'd instructed Alice only to tell him whether or not she was happy and nothing else.

"Edward."

Tonya strolled into the room. She wore a blue knitted sweater over jeans that were tucked into fuzzy, brown boots. She'd wound a warm pink scarf around her neck and had her hair pulled into a messy ponytail. She could almost pass for human.

Sometimes he wondered if that was why he'd chosen her.

"Yes?"

"The Cudmore's are coming to dinner again. I ran into Nancy at the grocery store. Really, I think she's just dying to see you again. She was practically drooling on you last time."

He thought of Bella's insecurities, how she'd often worried that he would choose someone that she deemed more beautiful than her. Tonya wasn't insecure. Even if she was trying to be a human, she was assured by her unnatural beauty, the kind that no mortal—in her eyes—could match.

"I didn't notice," he said, "but I'll change into something nice and make sure to be adequately personable this time around."

Tonya smirked, because she was always pestering him to be personable. She told him that he had cocooned himself into a shell, that he had withdrawn even farther from humanity, and that it simply wouldn't do. Tonya knew about Bella, but she'd done everything she could to pretend like Bella had never existed.

"Excellent."

She slid onto his lap as smooth as water, fitting there so easily that it startled him. He didn't know why. He was a perfect mold of a human, and she was a perfect mold of a human—of course they would fit together on some level. She slid her arms around his neck, and Edward felt slightly ill. She had to know that, to a certain degree, he was using her, but she didn't seem to care. He fit into the perfect mortal world that she'd constructed.

"The past is the past, Eddie. You should forget her," she said, referencing Bella for the first time. "It wasn't natural. At best, she probably would have just ended up dead."

He felt his stomach turn, but Tonya didn't pay any attention to the way that he blanched, withdrawing deeper into himself. Running a finger over his bottom lip, she followed it with her mouth. Her kiss was cold and void of feeling, but, as her tongue pressed against his teeth, they parted to allow her in. She tilted her head, forcing his chin up, and worked the kiss deeper.

Edward lifted his hands to her waist and held onto her. She wasn't human or alive or Bella, but she was real and substantial enough between his hands, and his fingers dug into her sides, and he tried to make it enough.

()()()()

**LPOV**

She'd gotten into the shower as soon as she heard Jacob walk out the front door. She'd turned a bottle of flowery body wash upside down and doused herself in it. The cold gel ran lines down her skin, frothing a little when the spray of water struck them, and becoming full blown suds as she dropped the bottle and worked the body wash into her pores. She rubbed it in until her skin felt raw and blushed red.

It was a futile attempt to mask the smell of him on her body, considering as soon as she got out of the shower, she'd just be coated in it again, but she needed a few minutes of mind-cleansing solitude.

She knew that it was probably too much to hope that he'd wizen up and be gone by the time that she got out of the shower, but it was still disappointing when she opened the bathroom door and saw him from the hallway window.

Having been bent over his work, Jacob straightened automatically and turned toward the window, as if he sensed her, which he probably did. Hissing to herself, she moved on into her bedroom, dragging clothes from her closet and dressing herself—still damp—in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. She'd pulled underwear on first thing, but hadn't bothered with a bra. Mainly because she couldn't locate where she'd tossed hers the night before.

Running her tongue over her teeth, she went about searching the room for a ponytail holder. She was searching a pile of clothes when Jacob knocked once on the door and let himself in. She straightened, scowling.

"What? Did you get it fixed?"

Jacob scowled back at her. "No, it's going to take some more time."

"Well, call a tow-truck," she snapped.

As if she was going to give him that easy of an excuse to stick around. She'd purchase a dog house for him to sleep outside before she let that happen. No more sharing her house together at night when all of the treacherous thoughts seeped in. The last thing she wanted to do was something stupid. Her track record was already damaged enough.

"No. I'm not letting anyone else touch my car. I can fix it."

Leah gritted her teeth. "Then you better get back out there and keep working."

Jacob switched his weight from one foot to another, and she hated how stubborn he was.

"I will, but not yet. I'm hungry."

She practically snarled. "I've never known you not to know how to help yourself to what's mine, but here, let me show you."

She started to stomp past him to lead him to the kitchen, but he didn't move out of the way like she'd expected him to, and she came up to a sudden stop against his chest. Gritting her teeth so hard together now that she thought they might break, she looked up at him, and it was a big mistake.

Just like when she'd opened the door and he'd shoved his way in, Jacob's eyes had gone dark, his jaw tightly clenched, as the space between them was suddenly nonexistent. And with that sudden awareness came the thick, hot scent of arousal. She wasn't sure whose need it was, but it might as well have been both of theirs, because they were equally as effected by it. She felt her muscles go loose and liquid, her breath stuttering.

It wasn't fair that he could make her react.

"What—What is this?" he asked.

And then he leaned down to sample her lips. The soft swell of his cupid's-bow mouth was a hard-hitter. It was soft like breath against her lips, testing the waters. She'd kissed him before, but those kisses had planned—not so mind-numbing and unexpected.

"A—A physical—" She choked on her own breath, trying to speak against his lips. "A physical reaction."

But still her eyes were closed, and she was leaning heavily into him, and, somehow, he'd worked his hand up her stomach, cupping her unshielded breast. His thumb, having been caressing her nipple, stopped.

"That's it? That's all you've got for me?"

She made herself open her eyes, and she could see Jacob removing himself.

"What else is there?" she asked, her voice hoarse. "Tell me you don't think the same."

"I—I drove here to find you. I didn't do that because your brother asked me to."

She straightened, pulling away from him. "Then why did you do it?"

The curling, invisible smoke of lust was fading as his annoyance began to eat at the aroma in the room. She wanted to tell him to stop being such a selfish bastard, but then, at the same time, she wanted to thank him for bringing her out of her stupid decision to let him kiss her.

"I—I don't know, but we need to talk about it."

Leah stiffened. "Fine. You figure out what—or who—you really want, and then we'll talk. Now move, and I'll get us breakfast."

She pushed past him, trying to breathe evenly. How stupid of her.


	8. Dreams of Solitude

**Author Notes: **I know, I'm horrible. There aren't enough ways to apologize for how long this update took. I graduated college and hit the biggest writer's block of my life. Still not sure if I'm completely around it, but I knew I couldn't leave this story unfinished, so I'm going to keep chugging along. Hopefully some of you still remain with me! Again, I'm really sorry, and I hope to never make you wait that long again!

* * *

**LPOV**

He wasn't trying to fix his car, and she knew it. Jacob could fix anything—anything mechanical at least. Pretending as if he didn't know how to get his car started again was a lame attempt to buy more time, and she wanted to call him out on it. She _had_ called him out on it, but he'd simply glared down at her and said that if he knew how to fix it, it'd be fixed by now. She'd gotten the sinking impression that he wasn't talking about the car. He was looking at her the wrong way, searching her face for something she'd be damned if she was going to offer up to him again.

After she'd pretty much thrown a package of frozen waffles at him for breakfast, she'd stormed out of the kitchen to hide in her room. There, she'd pressed uncertain fingers to her lips, wondering why the hell she couldn't stop tasting him.

The taste lingered for two days, just like Jacob himself. He made a show about going out to his car, thumping around under the hood, but they both knew better. She wasn't fooled, and he could probably tell as much by seeing the way that she scowled at him whenever they ran into each other inside the house. Still, she let him stay there, let him sleep on the couch. She didn't want to let him know how desperate she was to get him out.

Leah knew what he was trying to tell her: he wouldn't leave until she did.

She was thankful when it was time to go to work. A few hours out of the house would do her some good, and she could evaluate her next course of action. It wasn't fair that Jacob had invaded her little sanctuary, soiled her escape from La Push. Maybe she'd been half-running from Sam and her past with him, but she was beginning to realize that her biggest obstacle was Jacob Black, and the incessant way he crawled under her skin in a different way than Sam ever had.

She had to find a way to get him out.

The tension between her shoulder blades was growing into a larger mass of cramped muscle and anxiety, tightening so thickly it felt difficult to move her arms as she attempted to drag pen over paper, scribbling down the order the man at A5—her table—was reciting to her from the menu. Leah's fingers were cramping, and she wished, for a second, that she was in her house, alone, a paint brush in her hand. She was feeling the urge to translate herself onto one of her blank, white walls. But Jacob was at her house and any sense of translation became clouded around him—even language.

_Damn it_. She paused, holding her pen between her fingers, straining as if she might snap it in half. Jacob was ruining her safe haven.

"Are you all right?"

"Mhm."Leah barely glanced up at him before returning focus to the pad.

The man at A5 wasn't much older than Jacob, and though they didn't share a single damn visible quality with one another, Leah had seen Jacob sitting there for just a second as she'd looked up from the order she was writing down. Which was ridiculous. A5 was light-skinned and blonde. His face was much more angular, and his lips were slightly more thinned out, absent of a pronounced cupid's bow. His eyes were almost a pale, washed-out green. His build was lightly defined and absent of most of Jacob's considerable muscled bulk.

"A steak, medium rare. Baked potato with sour cream and butter. An order of fries, and a Caesar salad?"

A5 smiled. Leah saw it just over the top of her order pad.

"Right. Except I ordered a pork chop, mashed potatoes, and potato wedges. You got me on the Caesar salad though."

Leah willed herself not to scream. How had she misunderstood all of that? She had never had such a difficult time focusing. But, then again, she'd never attempted to take an order from a customer while her brain was clouded over with the image of Jacob stroking her breast, feeling his breath on her neck and mouth. A little harder than necessary, Leah dragged a black line through what she'd written on her pad, hurriedly replacing it with the correct order.

"I'm sorry. I'm not usually this terrible."

A5 shrugged, closed his menu, and slid it to the end of the table for her. He drew a finger down the sweat on the outside of the water glass she'd brought to him earlier and then looked back up at her as she gathered his menu and stuffed her pad into her apron.

"Are you a student here?"

A student? There was an idea. Leah ran a hand over her neck where Jacob's invisible lips seemed to be planted. She'd seen the university looming in the distance from her apartment, but college seemed like a far-off idea to her, something that existed only in fairytale. A few weeks ago, she'd thought her fate was forever connected to the reservation—no escape—and college had never been even a blimp on her radar. Leah tried to imagine what she would have majored in.

"No. I just moved here."

"Oh." A5 smiled again. "Well, I promise the town's not as bad as it seems right now."

She shook her head, feeling awkward lingering at the edge of his table not that his order had been taken. If Jacob hadn't taken up residence at her house, she wouldn't have been plagued with this unrelenting tension, making her feel so awkward and unfocused. Maybe she would have smiled back, flirted with A5. But Black had infiltrated her senses, wound himself tight as a noose. She was going to murder him as soon as she got home—rid herself of the weakness for good. She had to get him out.

"It's not that. I inherited a roommate unexpectedly, and what I was hoping to see as a fresh start is seeming a little less fresh and welcoming."

"Ah. Roommates. You know I heard they inhabit the seventh level of hell in Dante's Inferno."

"Well, I wish he'd go back there."

A5 lifted his brows. "He? Ah."

Leah nodded, having figured introducing a guy into the equation would curb A5's need to make conversation. "I'll be back with your order in a minute."

She wound her way away from his table, so full of Jacob Black she could vomit. Now he was affecting more than just her home life, but her work and social life as well. She didn't want or need him. It wasn't fair that she couldn't shake him from her senses. She could have flirted with A5, maybe even have managed a date from him—drinks, at least. He'd seemed friendly and interested, and he wasn't too bad to look at. Especially since—despite her strange connection between the two a minute ago—he looked nothing at all like Jacob.

It would have been refreshing to purge herself from La Push completely, maybe even constructing a completely new identity here. She would have, if Jacob hadn't found her. She could have put more of an effort into responding to A5's interest, and maybe she could have started something with him.

Typing A5's order into a computer in the back, Leah paused momentarily to lift a hand to her hair. She pulled her fingers through it: black silk. She could have dyed it, could have pretended her name was something else, could have lied about where she'd come from.

If only Jacob hadn't showed his face. He didn't have any damn business following her. He'd made his choice to stay with Bella a long time ago. She wasn't going to be his weekend freebie anymore.

A5 didn't have much else to say besides 'please' and 'thank you' for the rest of his stay as she delivered his food, refilled his glass, removed his empty dishes, and finally left him the check. Mentioning her male roommate had effectively ended his attempt to talk to her. Leah couldn't explain why she'd terminated the conversation. If she'd wanted to, she could have flirted with him, could have gone on a date or something, if that was what he'd been working them around to. Just because Jacob was here, it didn't mean that she had to put a pause on the life she wanted here.

But by the time she'd convinced herself to say something else to A5, he was already gone. She went to his empty table, frowning, wondering what he'd left her in a tip—or if he had at all, since she'd stomped on his friendly conversation—and found that he'd written in five dollars on his card receipt.

That wasn't too awful. Picking up the paper, though, she noticed a shadow of ink through the paper and turned it over. A5 had written his phone number and name—Jimmy Wilson—on the back.

()()()()

**JPOV**

He was a kid again, seeing Bella back in Forks for the first time. The ache of his heart was too familiar as he watched her stand uncertainly near the truck her father had surprised her with. She'd been beautiful to him in all of her awkwardness. Pale face and thick, dark hair still looking somehow feminine in her baggy clothes. She hadn't worn any makeup, and he'd liked the clean view of her face. She'd stood with one foot turned slightly out, one hand clasping the elbow of the opposite arm.

"Hey, Jacob," she'd said at length, her voice nervous and uncertain.

Yes, she remembered him from their much younger years before her family had cracked and broken apart, before she'd moved away—left Forks similarly to the way the wind moved through the trees: he heard the rustling, but looked up a fraction too late to see the branches shifting, the leaves ruffling. She remembered him, but obviously not in the fine, detailed way he remembered her. He'd sensed how little of an emotional impact he'd had on her then.

He had probably still seemed like a kid. Not mysterious or alluring like the first time she must have seen Edward Cullen. He'd agonized over what Edward had had that he hadn't, before he'd ever known the truth about the Cullen secret. He hadn't understood what the guy had had over him, but he'd recognized his own ability to overshadow him in Bella's eyes.

He would never have been able to outmatch him if Edward hadn't disappeared of his own free will, leaving Bella broken and weak on her own: just the condition he needed her in, though he hadn't expected her to be the one to reach out to him first. She was cruel like that: taking and taking but never wanting to give back.

Jacob had allowed her to suck him dry—past the point where he felt shriveled and used—hanging on the moment when she would turn into him, tilt back her head, and kiss him. That was his sign that he had her: the day that she pressed her lips to his and let him fully erase Edward Cullen. Months and months and months had passed before she'd committed herself to him, finally releasing whatever hope she held onto about Edward.

Even knowing that it made him only second best—first place only because the true winner had dropped out of the competition—he took her submission greedily. He'd gotten them a house, made her a life, and loved her until he was aching and empty and more broken than he'd ever been in his life.

He must have been holding his breath, because when he opened his eyes and found himself on Leah's couch, Jacob felt as if he couldn't breathe. He exhaled and inhaled greedily, breathing in the scent of Leah and paint. The hollow, echoing emptiness from his dream had followed him out, and Jacob rolled onto his side, pressing his face into the back of the couch, taking a few more deep breaths as he tried to shake free of the dream.

Maybe not so much of a dream as a recollection of his past. He closed his eyes, unwillingly recalling the night that Bella had offered to leave La Push with him. It was one of the first times he'd ever witnessed her considering his needs above her own. Had she loved him when she'd offered to leave everything behind? Maybe he should have taken her up on the offer. Forks and La Push seemed to be filled with ghosts and quicksand. Staying there, neither of them had been able to escape the past that was all around them. Maybe if they'd left, he could have had what he had always wanted with Bella: complete and whole love, no empty spots. He wouldn't have kissed Leah the day of Sam and Emily's wedding, further jarring space between himself and Bella, and he wouldn't have to live with the apprehension that Edward would eventually return to Forks, and he'd be forced to witness the true extent of Bella's feelings.

She lived in his house and slept in his bed, but who would she really pick if given the opportunity?

Jacob growled, sitting up on the couch as the front door opened, and he smelled Leah before he saw her. Her expression was strained as she spotted him on the couch—still, obviously, in her house, which she probably saw as unfortunate. Jacob frowned back at her as she stopped in the doorway and merely scowled at him.

He wondered how he'd gone from Bella to Leah: the bitch of the wolf pack. The only reason he could fathom was that she was the extreme opposite: strong, angry, able to hold her own and take care of herself. She didn't need him to lean on, and she didn't want him to lean on either. She had her own pain, her own lost love, but she didn't rest on memories of Sam like a crutch anymore.

Though she'd caved to running away from La Push, he understood what had motivated her. Whatever had happened between them, Jacob was using it as his own crutch. Things with Bella had not transformed into the happy ending he'd hoped, and he had been using Leah to hide from the truth. Leah probably didn't enjoy being his alternate plan any more than he'd enjoyed being Bella's.

"You know the Rabbit isn't really broken."

Leah cocked a brow. "No shit. Then why are you still here?"

"I'm not ready to leave yet."

He saw Leah's left hand close into a fist.

"Well, get ready," she snapped, turning on her heel to disappear to her room.

He wanted to follow her. He wanted to kiss her, to feel her skin underneath his hand. He wanted something that was real for once, and even if it was only just physical, Leah's response to him was always real.

What would he do if Leah continued to refuse to go back? Leave without her?

What was he really taking her back to anyway?

"I said, get your ass off my couch and get lost!" Leah shouted from her room.

"Make me!" he snapped back.

She threw something that bounced loudly off the wall between them. Why the hell did that make him smile? His presence obviously infuriated her. He was invading her safe haven, destroying her hopes of getting rid of him, leaving him behind in La Push.

He should have left, gone back to Bella. He shouldn't have stood up, shouldn't have let himself follow her to her bedroom where she stood in a plain white bra and her food-stained, black work pants. She looked up at him, her face pinched with annoyance and looking more severe with her hair pulled high in a ponytail.

"You act like you hate me."

She lifted her hands up as he closed the distance between them.

"I do hate you," she said.

He snorted. "Then stop reacting to me."

"I'm not." She ground her words between her teeth.

Because she must have sensed how false her denial sounded in a room clogged with tension. It was ridiculous how fast it happened, how fast a whole room could be devoured by whatever it was floating between them. Maybe that was what he'd followed her for. Maybe he was chasing the only real emotion he could stake claim to. Whatever it was charged with, it was there, hanging in between them. Leah was as much wolf as he was. He knew she could all but taste it too.

"Why are you fighting this?"

Her gaze flicked up and down him. "I don't want handouts from someone else's property."

Jacob scowled in response as his own gaze traveled across one of her bare shoulders. She had flawless skin save for the pucker of a scar on the inside of her right arm. He looked down at it now: where she and Paul had gotten into a fight over something he could no longer remember. Seeing what he was looking at, Leah clasped her opposite hand over the mark.

"I'm not a handout. That's not what this is."

"You have no reason to be here," Leah retorted. "You're Bella's, remember? Get it through your thick skull and get out of here."

"I can't." He looked up at her face again. "What if that's not what I want?"

"It's what I want. You ever thought of that?"

A subtle slap to the face. Jacob flinched as Leah turned away from him, toward the open dresser drawer she'd been searching through before he'd walked in. She pulled out a shirt and tugged it over her head, hiding the skin that he'd been enjoying looking at.

"This would be easier to figure out if you'd stop hissing at me all the time."

Leah pulled the rubber band from her hair. "It's figured out. You're still with Bella."

"What do you want me to do, Leah?"

She looked at him long and hard. "Get out of my house."


	9. In a Bed of Open Wounds

**Author Notes: **To truly apologize for how long I made you guys wait, I've worked extra hard to update twice today! And I added a little extra something this chapter to really pile on my apology. Thank you to those that have already reviewed Chapter 8 and given me hope that faithful fans will stick by me! I plan to reply to all those reviews, so if you haven't gotten a reply from me yet, be expecting one. It will come with a huge, resounding thanks! Enjoy!

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**JPOV**

Smooth, warm skin—hot, feverish flesh that lifted to graze itself against his calloused palm as he reached out for her. Jacob had second-guessed his decision to sneak back into her room after she'd fallen asleep that night—that night that she told him to get out of her house—until she arched for him in her sleep.

_Christ, _she slept naked.

She'd been curled onto her side, her face ducked into the covers so that only her closed eyes peeked over the lip of the comforter. He didn't ask for permission to slip into bed next to her. He knew what she'd say to him, and he didn't want to give her the chance. All of this fighting was senseless. He'd followed Leah for reasons he couldn't fathom. This one was the only one that he understood. Back in La Push, there were only echoes of emptiness, a cold bed with Bella even when they were intertwined. Leah made him feel alive again, breathing warmth into his body.

He didn't want to allow her to keep that from him. Even if it was wrong, he wanted her. Even if he should have felt like a bastard for taking, he wanted to take. And was it so wrong if she responded to him? Sliding slowly into awareness, she was already moving toward him. When he ran his hand up her side, she breathed out. When he skimmed her skin, tracing fingers around to her front where he skated her stomach, she breathed in.

Her hand emerged from the depths of the sheets, clenching lightly against his chest. Leah's lips parted, chin tilting upward, but her eyes remained closed, and she was still only half awake. He wanted her to look at him, to register that he was there, and that she wanted him there. She could deny it all she wanted, but he knew well enough that she craved him too. He nudged her onto her back.

"Leah."

She murmured something quietly in response that he couldn't hear. He let his hand slide down, past her belly button, coming to rest between her legs. He watched her nostrils flare as he pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth.

"Jake."

Her eyes were open when he slid two fingers inside of her. He listened to her breath stutter, liking the way something in his chest clenched with greedy anticipation as she arched against his palm. The sheets hissed as she slid her hands down them and clenched a handful, simultaneously bending her knees and drawing her feet up closer to her ass.

"We discussed this," she breathed.

"Tell me to stop."

He worked his fingers deeper, exploring just what it took to bring her to the balls of her feet. She gasped breathlessly, and he thought about the time he'd told Bella he was going to meet the pack for a few hours and had really snuck to Leah's house. It was the only other time that he'd been with her in a bed—her little twin-sized bed. His feet had hung off the end. And that had just been touching and kissing. Now—Now maybe it was going to lead to what he really wanted.

Staying on his side next to her, perfectly still, resisting the urge to sate himself, he was practically salivating, so hard pressed up against the outside of her leg that it hurt. It'd been too long since they'd been together. What had he been thinking? He needed this, would give anything for it.

"_Stop_." Leah's voice was so severe it stung.

()()()()

Jacob grunted, sitting up on the couch, sore and stiff all over from being cramped up on the thing. He growled out a breath, physically hurting as well because it appeared that his lucid dream had really made him hard. And there wasn't a completely naked Leah beside him to gratify his hunger for her.

She was down the hall, behind a closed door. The door she'd slammed in his face earlier, looking hot even in her work pants and her frayed, old white bra.

He'd fallen asleep on the couch when the sun had still been up. It was completely dark now, only a single street light shining through the window across the room. It washed a milky glow on the carpet. Jacob stared at the confusing shapes Leah had painted on the wall across from him, unable to see any one image too clearly in the lighting.

A flashing light drew his eyes to the floor beside the couch where his phone must have dropped. After the little display Leah had put on from reading one of his texts a few nights ago, he'd been trying to make sure it stayed in his pocket. But Leah apparently hadn't come out of her room, or she just hadn't cared enough to see what else Bella might have to say. Leaning over, he picked it up, flipped it open, and squinted as the screen's bright light flashed in his face.

From Bella: _I miss you._

He stared at it for a minute. Two minutes. Three. Until the words blurred in his vision. Three words. What was he trying to read from them? His own feelings? They weren't going to tell him the future, and they weren't going to make the stirrings in the pit of his stomach be for Bella. Jacob flipped the screen shut and closed his eyes. Was that the answer then? That, for whatever reason, his hopes about Bella had fallen flat on their face? It didn't seem real, that he could sit here, reading words he would have killed to hear her say several years ago, and not feel anything in response. Bella was the love of his life, wasn't she? He'd sacrificed so much for her, how could his feelings suddenly just vanish? He wanted to be sick over all that wasted time, the promises he'd made. He didn't want to believe he was that fickle.

He should have never tasted Leah's lips, should have never spent time with her, connected with her through their own personal agonies. She knew what it felt like to be used and broken. She understood how he could love Bella even though she'd trampled him so often. Even though he knew that she'd have left for Edward if she'd only known where to find him.

Jacob let his phone slide free of his grip, dropping heavily to the floor between his feet. He didn't have a reply for Bella. His only answer was the way his stomach seemed to lift quickly to his throat. It wasn't a new revelation: that Bella would leave him for Edward, but it was different considering it now, miles away from her, in Leah's apartment. Sitting alone, overly aware of his senses, the room around him, and the distance between himself and Leah. If he wanted to be with her, he was the only one stopping himself. Aside from Leah.

But she wanted him too, and he knew it.

Pushing himself to his feet, he padded down the hall, finding that Leah's door was cracked and not completely shut like he'd expected it. He lifted his hand and nudged it open with his fingers, not knowing if he was entirely surprised to find that Leah wasn't asleep. Her room was as dark as the living room, but he could see her silhouette sitting up in bed, her back against the wall.

They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds, in which time he felt that unbroken tension cloud the room around them. He could smell her from where he stood: her skin, the soap she'd used in the shower she'd taken that morning, the shampoo that had lathered her hair. He could even smell the grease that lingered on her from her shift at work. He could hear her as she breathed softly in and out of her mouth, and he wondered what she was thinking.

"I know why you don't want me here." He broke the silence even though he wanted it to linger on if that meant that they could be in the same room and drink up each other's company without fighting. "I understand, but it is—is this so wrong? I want you, Leah. I can't stand how long it's been since I've touched you."

The atmosphere shifted slightly, and, for a few seconds, he couldn't detect the sound of her breathing. It was torture waiting for her to answer him now that he'd offered himself up, but he couldn't just stay in the living room, sitting on the couch, pining and thinking about how maybe he'd been wrong about everything. He didn't know or understand the extent of his feelings, but he knew that he had come after her for a reason, and he didn't want to waste his time moping alone. He couldn't figure out what he wanted if Leah wouldn't let him in.

"That doesn't make things right," Leah said. "You lied to Bella about why you came here."

Hoping that he wasn't going to be punched for it, Jacob moved toward the bed. Her tone was wary, but it lacked its usual heat of anger. Hopefully he wasn't underestimating her apparent lack of will to fight. Before he could get next to the bed, however, Leah shifted and slid off the bed onto the floor. Jacob squinted in the darkness, thinking it looked like she might have just been wearing an oversized shirt. Funny that he was disappointed that she wasn't naked, like in his dream.

But, by all appearances, it looked like she'd been waiting for him to walk in, so he shouldn't have expected her to be anything but guarded.

"I know. I'm messed up. I should have just told her."

"What would you have told her?"

She didn't miss a beat—like she'd been waiting for the opportunity to ask the question. Jacob tested his limits and took another step forward, closing the distance between them. He sensed Leah stiffening slightly, but she didn't step away from him.

"I want you."

It wasn't what he'd have told Bella. He didn't know what he'd have told her. He didn't even want to think about her at the moment. He could feel the heat from Leah's skin. If he touched her wrist, there wouldn't be a scar from a vampire bite. If he asked her what she thought about Edward Cullen, she'd have sneered and wished him hell.

"Want?"

"I don't know, Leah. What's so wrong with that?"

He lifted his hands. She didn't move as he placed them on her hips. He could feel the hem of the shirt where it touched the elastic band of her—lacy?—underwear. His heart was immediately in his ears, and he could sense a shift in Leah as well. Since she'd let him touch her, he couldn't stop. He had to see how far he could go.

His hands slid up underneath her shirt, pulling the material up as he let his touch drift up her sides until her breasts were exposed. He could see the swell of them in the darkness. Ducking his head, he took one nipple into his mouth. The intake of her breath was glorious, and he followed the movement, unwilling to lose the taste of her against his tongue. She seemed unsteady as she attempted to back away from him, her hands lifted to his shoulders. He stepped with her until the backs of her knees pressed against the edge of the bed. Those knees locked immediately.

"Jacob," she warned, her voice rasping slightly.

"Let me," he begged before trailing his tongue once around her nipple.

Her hands squeezed his shoulders, weakly and unconvincingly trying to push him off. Jacob lifted his head, catching Leah's mouth with his. Her grip went slack as he trailed her bottom lip with his tongue before coaxing her teeth apart, exploring the depth of her mouth. She groaned into his mouth, and the vibration seemed to go straight down his throat to his gut where it clenched in aching need.

He knew why he'd followed her from La Push. He knew why he'd left Bella behind. He'd never wanted anyone so much.

Jacob nudged her again, and this time she let him push her back onto the bed. He fit comfortably—perfectly—between her bare legs as he pulled her shirt off in one, swift movement. Greedy, he pressed into her, his dick rubbing against the inside of her leg through the material of his shorts.

He could—He could _smell_ her response to him, the infinitely tantalizing scent of her growing wet. He slid his hand between them, feeling her through her underwear.

"You don't know—" He couldn't catch his breath. She was so thick in the air. "You don't know what that does to me."

"Jacob." She arched against his hand, and he thought he might die right there.

His tongue had swelled in his mouth, and he couldn't respond. With shaky hands, he worked the button of his pants loose and kicked free of them before leaning down and taking her mouth again. Her hands were on his chest, running down his sides, coming so close to where he wanted them that he thought he might pass out if she didn't hurry. He cupped her breasts, running his thumb over her nipple a lot less gently than he meant to as he strained into her.

"Jacob. _Stop._"

It wasn't the harsh, violent _stop_ from his dream, but it was unfortunately just as powerful. The last thing he'd expected her to tell him was to stop when he could practically taste her in the air. He froze on top of her, his mouth so close to hers that he thought about just silencing it again.

"Why?"

"We're not doing this. Not until you tell Bella."

"But, Leah—"

"You think I don't want to?" she snapped, cutting him off. "It's probably fairly obvious, but this isn't happening. Get off of me."

Like a trained little puppy, he automatically rolled off, stung.

"Leah—"

"_Please_."

It was the fragile way her voice squeaked that made him get up and gather his clothes off the floor. It wasn't as if he couldn't understand where she was coming from, but it was painful and so horribly unsatisfying. Like being drunk and giddy and suddenly becoming stone cold sober. He could have called Bella right then, told her, and finished this matter. But he didn't. Couldn't.

Why not?

"I'm sorry."

The worst apology of his life. But he couldn't say anything else. He didn't know _what_ to say. What could make it better besides telling Bella that he didn't want her, that he wanted Leah? And if he couldn't do that, then he really had nothing to say that Leah would want to hear. He understood that without being told.

Why couldn't he let her go?

Grinding his teeth, Jacob hated himself as he walked out of the room—back to his lonely, sad, cramped couch.


	10. Let's Not Play House

******Author Notes: **Sorry I didn't get around to replying to all of them yet, but thanks again for the reviews, guys! You really make writing fanfiction worth it. And all of you were kind enough to look the other way when I went through that terrible writer's block. I think I'm finally getting around it now and not without the help and support of my readers! You're why Misplaced Need keeps going. Also, I wanted to say that it was awesome how several of you made cake references in your reviews. I don't know if it was a conscious reference to my last fic, Revenge Cake, but it totally made me smile. Anyway, hope you enjoy Chapter 10!

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**Edward POV**

The Cudmore's were painful company. Nancy consistently sat entirely too close to him at the dinner table, casually bumping her knee against his whenever she reached for something in front of her. As she ladled peas onto her plate, her knee pressed his for a full minute.

"Oh, excuse me," she said, backing off too slowly for her apology to be sincere.

Edward offered her his most bland smile in return, trying not to blanch as her thoughts said something else completely.

_Touch me, you bastard. What else do I have to do?_

Edward lifted a brow, glancing away. Nancy seemed completely unaware of her husband, Howard's, presence on the other side of her, but, then again, he seemed equally uninterested in her. His attention had been hot glued to Tonya since she'd opened the front door and ushered them in. Humans were so predictable, so ready to be manipulated and used. As if they were begging to take the place of the turkey centerpiece as dinner.

Edward tried to find his bloodlust, but it was buried too deep. He'd lost touch with that innate side of him whenever he'd abandoned Bella. She was his blood singer—nothing else compared. Tonya, however, seemed to thoroughly enjoy the attention, but she wouldn't even consider eating her favorite pets when they paid her so much attention. Howard was hanging on every word, practically salivating when Tonya let out a melodious, tinkling laugh at some sorry joke Mr. Cudmore cracked. She could have been his perfect wife, played human with him. Edward tried to fathom why she clung to him instead. Edward made very little effort to keep up her façade—the bare minimum. He could look for the answers himself, but he didn't have any real desire to search Tonya's head when he was using her little game for his own reasons.

Someone else at the table, however, was transmitting their thoughts loud and clear.

Edward shifted in his chair, edging slightly away from Nancy, as she started imagining him slipping his hand up her dress underneath the table. The fantasy was really quite elaborate. She'd pictured his hand in perfect detail, even the way his pointer finger crooked as it edged around the black lace panties she had worn tonight. For _him_.

As the fantasy became even more inappropriate, Edward reminded himself to breathe, act casual. He inhaled, exhaled, stuttering only a little as Nancy's vision became even more unrealistic, and she imagined him fucking her on the table while her _idiot_—her word, not his—husband watched in disbelief, swelling with feelings of inadequacy.

Coughing slightly, Edward made every effort not to look back in Nancy's direction, though he heard her wondering if his rigid display of unaffected indifference to her was his attempt at hiding arousal.

What a long shot. How desperate could she get? Edward couldn't quite peg why he was so offended by the notion that she was attracted to him, except that his annoyance rested with the idea that she had the audacity to think that he wanted her. He didn't want anyone. Except Bella.

And, of course, there it was.

He felt like a mannequin sitting at Tonya's table, playing her games. She might as well have been positioning his arms and legs. She'd already dressed him for the evening, insuring that he fit perfectly into the mold of her page-from-a-magazine life. He'd abandoned all hope and emotions when he'd stepped foot in Alaska. At least, he'd tried. He was doing this for Bella, wasn't he? All these years he'd let slide by, all this time he'd given her to forget him. If he had to suffer, he would suffer, so long as she survived.

That was his creed.

Unfortunately, it was becoming unbearable. He was sick of the charades, of pretending like he wanted to have dinner with the Cudmore's while Nancy Cudmore imagined _fucking him until he went blind_—her latest choice of words, not his—while sitting next to her own husband. He hated pretending to be married to Tonya. He hated kissing her. He hated how she was cold on the outside as well as the inside.

He'd spent so much time away from Bella that he was having trouble remembering exactly why he had left to begin with. Alice had told him that she was happy and safe. He'd given her that gift but at a grave price. Edward was losing his sanity in Alaska. Maybe it was already gone. He felt suffocated.

"Eddie, honey, don't you think ice fishing would be fun?"

He felt ridiculous.

"Huh?"

From the other end of the table, Tonya's impeccable smile wavered just a fraction before becoming steady again. One point off for him for not paying attention to the conversation at hand. One point off for him for not being a warm, enthusiastic, and attentive host. Her smile edged whiter, fully showcasing her perfect, straight teeth. It took Howard a full minute to realize her attention was diverted, but, slowly, his balding head turned toward Edward. He looked genuinely confused that Edward hadn't been dangling on Tonya's every word too. Beside him, Nancy was annoyed that Tonya had drawn his notice—_the interfering, overly perfect bitch _that didn't deserve to be married to him. Edward almost laughed. He was glad that he didn't, afraid that he wouldn't be able to stop if he did.

"Howard was talking about taking us ice fishing. Wouldn't that be fun?"

There was an edge to her tone, subtly scolding him. Like a child. When had he allowed himself to become a puppet? He'd left everything that had ever meant anything to him: Bella, his family, his home. Would he really have to stay in Alaska forever just to make sure that she was safe? That sounded worse than death, imagining what extent he'd have to go to in order to become exactly what Tonya wanted. He'd lose himself. His identity would burn to nothing.

"No," Edward said, sounding slightly more desperate than he'd meant to.

Everyone went quiet. Even Nancy's mind blanked momentarily.

"What?" Tonya asked, at length.

"It sounds unbearable."

Nancy's lips parted silently. Howard stared at him with lifted brows.

"That's not a very funny joke, Edward."

"It's not a joke, but don't worry, I'm sure Howard would take you without me. Gladly."

Nancy gasped like she was offended—like she wasn't plagued with as much infidelity as her husband. Edward rolled his eyes in response as Howard tried to sputter out a denial.

"Edward," Tonya warned.

But he was really done. Completely. Now that he'd spoken out of turn, he felt liberated, an old slice of himself finding its way back home. He didn't know what he'd been thinking, but, regardless of what he did about Bella, he couldn't stay here anymore. Alaska would kill him, one way or another, and he could bear even one more of Tonya's cold, heartless kisses. He wouldn't sit through one more meal and force himself to eat what tasted even less appetizing than rocks.

"Don't feel guilty, Howard. Your wife is just as eager to leave you," Edward said. "Unfortunately, I'm leaving now. Alone."

"Leaving?" Nancy was the only one that spoke.

And she wasn't even trying to defend herself. He didn't understand the Cudmore's. He was glad he wouldn't have to see them again.

"Yes. I can't stand one more night here."

Tonya's face was incredibly pinched. Her fury made for a horrible imperfection on an otherwise beautiful face. It clouded her features so thoroughly that she might have looked frightening—probably did look frightening by the way that even Howard was leaning away from her. For the first time since he'd arrived in Alaska, he opened himself up to Tonya's thoughts.

_You insufferable, leaching bastard._

"I am," Edward agreed.

Tonya's eyebrows lifted just a fraction, but then she seemed to understand what was going on. The smirk on her face was vicious.

_How dare you take advantage of what I had here? How dare you stomp on everything I've given you? _

"I apologize, but it's just not going to work. Better now, right? Than waiting any longer for the inevitable?"

Howard and Nancy glanced at one another then back toward their respective love interests. Maybe they thought he was crazy, speaking—apparently—to himself, but he had closed them out and was listening only to Tonya. He was ready to end this all tonight, to be done with it.

_You're chasing false hope. _Tonya was snarling now. _You're going back to nothing. She's human. She's probably forgotten about you by now. Probably even married with kids. You'll look like a fool. _

It was the only thing that she could have said that would have insulted him, and it worked. He was plagued by the doubts himself, knowing that he couldn't be too hopeful, since he was the one that had created the rift. But he couldn't stay here any longer. He had to get out.

"I'm not staying here either way. This is just a bad joke."

Edward lifted his napkin from his lap and tossed it onto the table before pushing to his feet and striding out of the room. He went straight for the front door. There was nothing in this house that he wanted to take with him.

()()()()

**Seth POV**

He had a hunch that he was missing something. Maybe a lot of something. Hell, it was definitely a lot of something. His sister had been gone for more than a handful of days, which was bad enough. What was worse—and totally bizarre—was that Jacob had disappeared along with her, and to say that most of the wolves were restless without their leader was an understatement. Nothing big had shaken up La Push since Eddie Twatbag Cullen had left town. Since he seemed to be chronically plagued with bad guys, he'd taken all the trouble they'd seen with him.

He'd also had the decency to leave Bella Swan behind, and the pack had been relieved that they hadn't had to think anymore on the guy—since everyone knew that Jacob wouldn't let Bella go without a fight.

Which was what made Jake's prolonged disappearance now so weird. Bella was still in La Push, and Jacob was nowhere to be seen. For as long as Bella had been back around, Jacob hadn't seemed to have been able to go more than an hour without her before suffering from serious withdrawals. He'd barely seemed to tolerate Seth's sister, and now Jacob was spending time with her and grown too attached to the ploy of bringing her back to return to his lady love.

Something just didn't add up, and, the more he thought about it, the less Seth wanted to do the math and figure out what it was. Leah had left with no explanation in the middle of the night. Nothing had stuck out to him as the source for her need to run. It'd been months since Emily and Sam had gotten married. If that had bothered her, she would have ditched town right after it had happened.

So what had he missed that had triggered his sister's fleeing instincts. And what was taking Jacob so damn long to get back? When he'd asked the guy to go after his sister, he'd expected Jake to give talking her into coming home a shot, but he'd thought that, once he'd failed—which it'd been likely that he would—that he'd come straight back home to Bella.

But surely—surely—he was over-analyzing this. Leah was part of the pack, and Jake was the alpha. It was his job to keep them all together, so he was probably just taking the job seriously and trying to thaw Leah out and convince her to come back. No one should be surprised that it was taking this long, since Leah usually did whatever the hell she felt like and told everyone else to rot.

He had to get his mind out of the gutter before he made himself sick.

"Any news?"

Seth shrugged in Sam's direction as he stepped into the clearing with the pack's temporary leader. Quill was the only other pack member there. The rest were either out on patrols or enjoying some time off. Still, Seth could sense tension between them. He wasn't sure what the vibe meant, except that he might not be the only one questioning Jacob's absence.

"Bella said that Jake was still working on Leah. You know my sister. She's a hard egg to crack."

Sam frowned, not quite as forgiving. Seth could imagine what he was thinking: Jacob was on a wild goose chase, Leah wasn't worth splitting up their numbers just because she felt like running off and having a hissy fit that no one could explain. Seth had heard Embry make a crack the other day that Leah must have been seriously PMSing to throw such a tantrum and desert them. He'd let it pass, but he didn't believe his sister would run off without a good reason. She was hard-headed and could undoubtedly be a serious bitch, but he knew Leah was smarter than that. She wasn't _that_ careless, surely.

"We should call Jacob back. Leah will come back in her own time. I don't like being split up like this," Sam said.

Seth shrugged again. "It's not like we're hurting for numbers. Nothing's happened here in awhile."

Jacob was a good leader, but it wasn't like they were helpless without him. Seriously. He didn't know what Sam's deal was. Except maybe falling in love with Emily had lessened his sympathy for Leah. Seth turned his attention to the ground, kicking at a clump of dirt. He'd overheard the garbage Sam had told his sister about always being her friend the day he'd gotten married. Neither of them had been aware of his accidental eavesdropping though, and Seth had kept it to himself that he thought it was shitty timing and a poor choice of words on Sam's part. Really damn insensitive considering everyone had known how poorly Leah had been adapting.

But Leah was strong, and he refused to believe that was why she'd left La Push now. Though it wouldn't have killed Sam to be a little more forgiving.

"We don't have time for personal vacations."

Seth gritted his teeth, willing himself not to start a fight. He told himself that Sam was probably just mad that so much responsibility had been dumped back onto him, and he couldn't fully utilize the time he'd had after Jake had become alpha to spend the days shacked up with his wife. He couldn't think of a reason why Emily would want to shack up with a prudish tight-ass like Sam.

"I don't think it was really for leisure, leaving, but I'll see if I can get a hold of them," Seth said, his tone curt.

"Good, because I—"

Seth was glad when Paul appeared in the clearing, maneuvering nimbly through thickly growing foliage until he'd all but silently landed next to Seth. The disruption was well-timed, because Seth had been considering clocking Sam in the jaw—just once—to even the score he should have settled when Sam had dropped his sister like hot rocks. Imprint be damned. At the very least, he could have pretended like he still cared about Leah.

"Hey, Paul. What's up?" Seth slapped Paul on his bare back.

But his attention was locked on to the temporary alpha, and he didn't even bother giving Seth a nod of acknowledgement.

"Edward's back."

Seth coughed on the saliva he'd been in the process of swallowing.

"Sh_it_," he spat between hacks.

He didn't even have to look at Sam to see how this registered, which was just as well, because that was the last direction he wanted to look after having just commented and not needing any more security than they already had. His excuses to let Jacob remain unaccounted for with his sister had dwindled from slim to none with one short announcement on Paul's behalf.

"Of course," Sam said, his tone surprisingly even. "We all knew that he'd return eventually, right? Is he here for Bella then?"

Seth finally did look in Sam's direction, wondering if he didn't sound a little bit hopeful at the prospect. It wasn't like it was a secret that Sam hadn't really cared all that much for Bella to begin with. She'd been a little too fond of the bloodsuckers for Sam's liking, and he'd never completely trusted her. He'd probably be glad to have her gone, along with all the threats that seemed to linger over her: namely that she was somehow a vampire magnet, always a risk. Edward Cullen had been pretty attached to her, hadn't he?

"I don't know," Paul said. "He went straight to the Cullen place in Forks. I waited around for about an hour, but he didn't make any move to leave and try to come into La Push."

Sam frowned, and Seth wondered why he wasn't glad that Edward hadn't tried to step over the boundary line. The guy really was a cold robot deep down—he was really that eager to be rid of Bella. Even knowing what it would probably do to Jake to come back home and find his house empty, smelling like Eddie Cullen. That would be a killer shot to the groin to any man.

"And Bella's at Jake's place. I checked. She's been there all day. Doesn't seem to know Edward's back," Paul continued. "I'm not sure what's going on."

Sam looked toward Seth. "The Cullen's have always been a threat, even if only indirectly from the trouble that follows them. We need to get Jacob back here. And your sister, if possible. Try to get a hold of him."

Seth nodded. "Sure. I'll catch up with you guys later."

Seth turned and proceeded—not quite as nimbly as Paul—through the woods. At times, he wasn't completely sure if he liked Sam, but he couldn't argue with him now. Even if Edward wasn't bringing physical trouble, it was only a matter of time before he encroached on Jake's property, and he thought Jake might want to be aware of what was coming.


	11. Fool's Errand

**Author Notes: **Hey guys, sorry that this update is so long overdue. Incase some of you haven't read my profile, I was accepted into an MFA program for the spring. :) I am so much more excited about this than I can explain, but I've also been pretty busy because of it. I've been trying to read through an extensive reading list required before the semester, as well as tending to other day-to-day types of things, so fanfiction has, unfortunately, been forced to take a lower priority. I know it's maddening waiting for updates, but they'll come until the story is finished, though they might be annoyingly spaced apart. I'm really sorry for this, but I appreciate those of you that stick around to see it through! Thanks for being faithful fans! I am very fortunate!

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**Edward POV**

The extent of his journey felt the heat of Tonya's anger at his back. It was a living breathing thing, a presence so fully exerted onto his shoulders that he took a few glances backward to ensure that someone wasn't actually riding piggy-back. He had a good idea that she was concentrating her every effort into transmitting her feelings toward him loud and clear. She knew his intentions—had been humiliated by him—and wanted him to know of her need for vengeance, her belief in his unavoidable failure. It was as if he could hear her:

_She is with him. She will never be yours again. You have nothing. _

Edward hunched his shoulders, pretending as if he couldn't hear her. If he was really even hearing her at all. More likely it was his own doubts, his own sense of foolishness. He had taken so long to come to his senses, why would Bella wish to forgive him now? Take him back into willing arms? He had forced her through an unfortunate thing, had made her feel unloved, unwanted, after so many grand promises.

He had broken all of those promises. Who would risk betting on him again, after that? Still, he had left the last of his snowy foot prints behind with Tonya, taken a plane, a cab—ran the last few miles as if to outrun his doubts.

He hadn't outrun enough of them.

Edward had sought the boundary line of La Push only to seek a swift retreat. He'd come all this way with heroic notions of crossing it, recklessly, finding Bella where he knew she was tucked away: Jacob's house. Finding her and telling her he'd been a fool, persuading her on his knees if he must. But his skewered notions of grandeur faltered and then puffed out altogether, and he'd found himself going home.

He'd found himself at the front door of his family home, not entirely surprised to find it opened before he'd even reached it—the frame filled with the faces of his family that he'd thought had deserted the house shortly after him. Yet, here they were again, as if they'd known that he'd need their welcome.

Of course they'd known. Edward's gaze slid over Alice, who smiled a small, strained smile in his direction.

"Edward, you've come home." It was Carlisle that offered him the first real, full smile. Warm and welcoming as always, a smile that traced across his cheeks and seemed always to reach his eyes. Though Edward wondered at the sincerity of it, he did not probe into his father's mind.

"I wonder if we can't guess why."

Edward welcomed Rosalie's cynicism, her open opposition to nearly everything he did. For once, he felt it justified. Perhaps it had been justified all along. Had he ever acted or thoguht on reason? He could see the truth of all of his doubt's in his blonde, adopted sister's eyes. The most beautiful, bitter realist. He could feel her thoughts pressing into him, as if she had quietly assented taking over Tonya's assault.

_Bella is unreachable. She belongs with Jacob. She's human. You cross that line, you jeopardize all of us. Always the lovesick fool._

Her thoughts seem too accusatory, too pointed and direct for him to believe that they were just thoughts. When they read again in a loop, Edward was certain that she meant to be speaking them to him. They were for him to hear, and, unfortunately, he could do nothing but hear them. He frowned in her direction, but she only tilted her head to the side, lifted her chin. Her perfectly lined and lipsticked lips puckered as if begging him to retort.

Behind her, Emmett placed a hand on her shoulder, as if he could read her mind as well. His expression was apologetic, but it melted into the scenery of Rosalie's derision at his reappearance. There would be no assuaging her annoyance at his his return.

_Jeopardizing everything. Always only thinking of yourself._

Edward's brows drew together, but he said nothing.

"Whatever his intent, he will always be welcomed home," Esme said, lightly but with underlying command. "Why don't we all take to the living room, and Edward can explain there."

He followed his family into the house. Jasper closed the door behind them, and they arranged themselves around the living room. Edward sunk into a plush, white reclining chair. He sat on the cushion as if perched on a wooden, splintered bench. He felt not unlike a man on trial when Rosalie perched on the arm of the couch directly across from him—elevated above him, scowling down her nose at him.

Jasper must have noticed, because an air of tranquility settled over the living room. Edward thought this might have been a foolish risk on his brother's part, as Rosalie took a moment to look pointedly in their emotionally appeasing brother's direction. Seizing the distraction, Edward looked down at his hands, entwined in his lap, so that he would not have to be weak and break Rosalie's unrelenting gaze while she was holding him with it.

He heard her snort as she returned her focus to him, obviously disappointed that she would be unable to continue boring holes into him. Carefully, Edward constructed a wall against her thoughts as well. He already disliked himself enough at the moment. He didn't really need her own disdain piled on top.

"Is Bella why you've returned then?" Carlisle spoke, at last.

Edward gave a short nod. "Yes."

Rosalie snorted again.

"Though you're aware—?"

Edward cut across Carlisle, "That she's with Jacob? Yes."

"Then what do you intend? Bella is in La Push. We think that there might have been dissension among their ranks, as we haven't noticed Jacob or Leah with the pack in some days, but—I doubt that changes the rules."

"Whatever's going on, Jacob will find out if you cross that line, Eddie," Emmett added. "You go to Bella, and he's going to be one pissed wolf."

Edward turned his hands over, studied them. For months they had not been his own hands. They had been puppet hands attached to strings that Tonya had pulled on whim. He had walked, talked, thought however she'd wanted him to. He'd pretended to be a human, pretended Bella hadn't existed. He'd placed his hands on Tonya, intending to burn Bella from his senses. But that world had not been real. This was what was real. He had never been more sure that his fate had rested with Bella.

"I'll find a different way to see her, but I'm going to see her. If she won't have me, then she won't have me, but I have to know."

Edward paused, drew in a breath, and looked up at Rosalie. As he'd expected, she was still scowling down at him, though her nostrils had flared rather noticeably since he'd last looked a few minutes ago. He could read her opinion of his decision clearly in her eyes. They were gold eyes, but they'd never appeared closer to red to him.

"This isn't a rash decision. All this time I've been gone, I've tried to talk myself out of it, but it was of no use. I came back, because I have to know, and I'm sorry for whatever strain this places on our family."

Because he would do this regardless of how Rosalie felt, Edward turned his sights instead upon Carlisle. If the man—not his birth father, but his father all the same—forbid him from seeking out Bella, would he do it anyway? A squirming worm of guilt slid down his throat, because he thought he still would. He owed his family a great deal, but there was something about Bella that had ensnared him from the beginning. She was his mate.

"We won't stop you," Carlisle said, at length, "but I do urge you to do as you suggested and wait for Bella to cross the boundary line. None of us would favor a fight with the wolves."

"Speak for yourself," Emmett muttered, his playful grin squelched by a searing look from Rosalie.

"Thank you," Edward said, quietly.

()()()()

**Jacob POV**

His night on the couch had been the coldest and most unsatisfying one yet. Loneliness was welling inside of him, coupled with the festering knowledge that he was the only one standing in his own way. Jacob had listened to Leah leaving the apartment earlier, padding quietly and wordlessly out to her shift at work. She had nothing to him. He had made no attempt to say anything to her. He'd remained on his back on the couch, studying the cracked popcorn textured ceiling with an infinite amount of interest. Each crack represented a crevice in his own life.

Five million crevices for each wound Bella had inflicted over a lifetime, only a dozen half-sealed from her minimal effort to be with him over recent years. A handful of crevices from Leah, growing wider and longer and more jagged with each second that ticked past. Every crevice he looked at, he imagined himself falling in. When would he hit bottom?

He wasn't a teenager anymore. He couldn't hide behind unrealistic fantasies, illusions that everything would work itself out on its own in time. He'd once believed that Bella had been meant for him, that, no matter how thoroughly convincing her fate with Edward seemed, something would eventually happen, driving her into his arms, creating his happily ever after. Something of the sort had happened, but it was not a fairytale.

He'd always felt on borrowed time with Bella, so why was he content to let it remain? All he had to do was tell her, and he could be free. Whatever fears he had of losing Bella from his life, could they be worse than this torture? He had Bella's body, but not her heart. He had always been overly aware of this.

If he could only confess that his desires had changed, he could finally have something real and whole, as fucked up as life with Leah was bound to occasionally be. But he hadn't come all this way, hadn't remained waiting for her, because he wasn't interested in that life.

Jacob rolled from the couch onto his feet. He moved to her painting wall, ran his fingers over the art, felt the texture of the paint and the imprinted curve of her brush. She wasn't Picasso, but he could see her heart in it. Leah was real. She belonged to no one else.

Jacob jolted as his phone rang, vibrating in his pocket, echoing against the walls of the empty apartment. He pulled it free, frowned at the screen. Though he was relieved—foolishly, cowardly—that it wasn't Bella, he was no more eager to talk to the person that was showing on his ID: Seth. He would, of course, be filled with questions about his sister, how things were going, why the hell they were taking so long.

He didn't want to have to make up any excuses, so Jacob silenced the call and slid the phone back into his pocket.


	12. An Update

Dear Readers,

I am posting this response as a chapter for several reasons, none of which were to disappoint you when you discover that this isn't an update.

I didn't forget about the story.

No, it's not up for adoption.

I do plan on continuing it until the end.

I am getting my masters degree, and it is very time-consuming and muse-zapping as far as anything outside of what I am writing for my thesis goes.

I hate to leave all of you hanging, because I have gotten a lot of positive response for this fic, but don't think that I'm not going to finish it, because I am. It's just taking me an unfortunate amount of time to have time to do so.

I also decided to post this as a chapter update, because a lot of you are posting as Guests, and either my computer or this site will not let me respond to you if you aren't logged in. So this was my only way to update all of you at once. Forgive me if I got your hopes up, but take solace in the fact that I really am going to finish this fic, I promise.

So please, bear with me, and if you want updates, follow me on Twitter. My username is the exact same. You can also ask me questions on there and such.

Anyway, thank you all for reading so far, and I hope when I do get to update again that you will be happy that you waited.


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